Clemence Dane

(February 21, 1888 – March 28, 1965)

Clemence Dane was the pseudonym of Winifred Ashton, an English editor and writer best known for her mainstream novels and plays.

She wrote some fantasy, however, and in 1955, she edited the Novels of Tomorrow series of science fiction books featuring such authors as John Wyndham, John Christopher, Robert Sheckley and Cyril M. Kornbluth. Her interest in sf went back much earlier, though; she read Astounding Stories, Wonder Stories and Weird Tales, and in 1936, she published a couple of essays lauding what she called “American Fairy Tales” in Fortnightly (April 1936) and North American Review (Autumn 1936), where she may have been the first to use the phrase “sense of wonder” about the genre.

She is known to have attended at least one meeting of the London Circle, the last at the White Horse.

Entry in The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction.

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Person

1988—1965

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