Title: Gladys Storey Letter (VMF163), 1942
Administrative/Biographical History
Gladys Storey (1897- 1964) was a British actress and author. After World War I, Storey abandoned her career as an actress and became a writer. She renewed her relationship with Kate Dickens Perugini, whom Storey’s father had introduced to her in 1910, with the intention of writing a biography of her father, Charles Dickens. Over the next few years Gladys and her mother were regular visitors to Kate's home in Chelsea.
At some point Kate asked Storey to write her biography. She gave her some detailed interviews but stipulated book should not be published until after Henry Fielding Dickens and she had died. Kate spoke openly about her father's relationship with Ellen Ternan. Kate died on May 9, 1929 and Storey published her book, Dickens and Daughter in 1939. Supporters of Charles Dickens attacked the book as being unreliable, especially the passages about Ellen Ternan and the birth of a child. However, George Bernard Shaw wrote to The Times Literary Supplement to say that Kate had told him everything in the book forty years before.
