Lettice Ulpha Cooper, was an English

English people

The English are a nation and ethnic group native to England, who speak English. The English identity is of early mediaeval origin, when they were known in Old English as the Anglecynn. England is now a country of the United Kingdom, and the majority of English people in England are British Citizens...

 writer. She was born in Eccles, Lancashire on 3 September 1897. She began to write stories when she was seven, and studied Classics

Classics

Classics is the branch of the Humanities comprising the languages, literature, philosophy, history, art, archaeology and other culture of the ancient Mediterranean world ; especially Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome during Classical Antiquity Classics (sometimes encompassing Classical Studies or...

 at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford

Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford

Lady Margaret Hall is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in England, located at the end of Norham Gardens in north Oxford. As of 2006 the college had an estimated financial endowment of £34m....

 graduating in 1918.

She returned home after Oxford to work for her family's engineering firm and wrote her first novel, The Lighted Room in 1925. She spent a year as associate edtior at Time and Tide

Time and Tide (magazine)

Time and Tide was a British weekly political and literary review magazine founded by Margaret, Lady Rhondda in 1920. It started out as a supporter of left wing and feminist causes and the mouthpiece of the feminist Six Point Group. It later moved to the right along with the views of its owner...

 and during the Second World War worked for the Ministry of Food's public relations division. Between 1947 and 1957 she was fiction reviewer for the Yorkshire Post

Yorkshire Post

The Yorkshire Post is a daily broadsheet newspaper, published in Leeds, West Yorkshire, England by Yorkshire Post Newspapers, a company owned by Johnston Press...

. She was one of the founders of the Writers' Action Group along with Brigid Brophy

Brigid Brophy

Brigid Antonia Brophy, Lady Levey was an English writer. In the Dictionary of Literary Biography: British Novelists since 1960, S. J...

, Maureen Duffy

Maureen Duffy

Maureen Patricia Duffy is a contemporary British poet, playwright and novelist. She has also published a literary biography of Aphra Behn, and The Erotic World of Faery a book-length study of eroticism in faery fantasy literature.-Life and work:After a tough childhood, Duffy took her degree in...

, Francis King

Francis King

Francis Henry King, CBE was a British novelist, poet and short story writer.He was born in Adelboden, Switzerland, brought up in India and educated at Shrewsbury School and Balliol College, Oxford. During World War II he was a conscientious objector, and left Oxford to work on the land...

 and Michael Levy and received an OBE for her work in achieving Public Lending Rights. In 1987 at the age of ninety she was awarded the Freedom of the City

Freedom of the City

Freedom of the City is an honour bestowed by some municipalities in Australia, Canada, Ireland, France, Italy, New Zealand, South Africa, Spain, the United Kingdom, Gibraltar and Rhodesia to esteemed members of its community and to organisations to be honoured, often for service to the community;...

 of Leeds

Leeds

Leeds is a city and metropolitan borough in West Yorkshire, England. In 2001 Leeds' main urban subdivision had a population of 443,247, while the entire city has a population of 798,800 , making it the 30th-most populous city in the European Union.Leeds is the cultural, financial and commercial...

.

She never married and died on 24 July 1994 in Coltishall, Norfolk.

Selected Works

• The Lighted Room (1925)
• The New House (1936) (Reprinted by Persephone Books
  Persephone Books
  Persephone Books is an independent publisher based in Bloomsbury, London. Founded in 1999 by Nicola Beauman, Persephone has a catalogue of 93 "neglected novels, diaries, poetry, short stories, non-fiction, biography and cookery books, mostly by women and mostly dating from the early to...
  
  in 2004)
• National Provincial (1938)
• Fenny (1953)
• Biography of Robert Louis Stevenson (1947)
• Black Bethlehem (1947)
• Blackberry's Kitten (1960)
• Tea on Sunday (1973)
• Snow and Roses (1976)
• Desirable Residence (1980)
• Unusual Behaviour (1986)
• Une Journee avec Rhoda (1994)