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Alice Elizabeth Burton or Aitken (4 October 1908 – 20 July 1990) was a British-Canadian novelist and popular historian.

Life

Born in Cairo to Richard Burton and Alice Gwendolyn (née Kerby, later Duck), she grew up in Windsor, Ontario. She later studied privately in Rome. In 1935 Burton married John Theodore Aitken at Windsor, Ontario. In the 1940s she wrote comic fantasy novels under the pseudonym Susan Alice Kerby. In Miss Carter and the Ifrit (1945), a Muslim spirit helped a spinster to find love during the Second World War. In Mr Kronion (1949), a Greek god defended English village life.

From 1945 to 1965, she was the London correspondent of a Canadian daily, the Windsor Star. Changing her surname by deed poll from Aitken to Burton in 1950, she published her historical writing as Elizabeth Burton.

She died in Witney, Oxfordshire, in 1990.

Works

Novels

As Alice Elizabeth Burton

• Cling to her, waiting. London: A. Dakers, 1939.

As Susan Alice Kerby

• Fortnight in Frascati. London: A. Dakers, 1940.
• Miss Carter and the Ifrit. London: Hutchinson, 1945.
• Many Strange Birds. London: Hutchinson, 1947. Published in the US as Fortune's Gift. New York: Dodd, Mead & Co., 1947.
• Gone to Grass: a novel. London: Hutchinson, 1948. Published in the US as The Roaring Dove. New York: Dodd, Mead & Co., 1948.
• Mr Kronion: a novel. London: Werner Laurie, 1949.

Historical writing

• The Elizabethans at Home. Secker & Warburg, 1958. Illustrated by Felix Kelly. Published in the US as The Pageant of Elizabethan England, Scribner, 1959.
• The Jacobeans at Home Secker & Warburg, 1962. Illustrated by Felix Kelly. Published in the US as The Pageant of Stuart England, Scribner, 1962.
• Here is England. New York: Ariel Books, 1965.
• The Georgians at Home, 1714-1830. London: Longman, 1967. Illustrated by Felix Kelly. Published in the US as The Pageant of Georgian England, Scribner, 1967.
• The Early Victorians at Home, 1837-1861. London: Longman, 1972. Illustrated by Felix Kelly. Published in the US as The Pageant of Early Victorian England, Scribner, 1972.
• The Early Tudors at Home, 1485-1558. London: Allen Lane, 1976. Illustrated by Felix Kelly. Published in the US as The Pageant of Early Tudor England, Scribner, 1976.

References

1. England & Wales, Civil Registration Death Index, 1916–2007
2. ^ "[Marriage registration]". Ancestry.co.uk. 23 Nov 1935. Retrieved 16 May 2021.
3. "[Marriage registration]". Ancestry.co.uk. 9 Oct 1911. Retrieved 16 May 2021.
4. Burton, The Georgians at Home, Arrow Books, 1973.
5. Colin Manlove (2016-07-27). The Fantasy Literature of England. Springer. p. 128. ISBN 978-1-349-27499-4.
6. The Writers Directory 1980-1982. Springer. 1979. p. 178. ISBN 978-1-349-03650-9.
7. The London Gazette, 14 July 1950, p.3658
8. England & Wales, National Probate Calendar (Index of Wills and Administrations), 1858–1995

External links

• Elizabeth Burton at Library of Congress, with 16 library catalogue records as Elizabeth Burton and Susan Kerby
• Susan Alice Kerby at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database

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• British women historians
• British women novelists
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