Allen Raine was the pseudonym of the Welsh novelist Anne Adalisa Beynon Puddicombe (6 October 1836 – 21 June 1908), who was born in Newcastle Emlyn. Her novels had sold more than two million copies by 1912.
Life
She was born Anne Adalisa Evans in Newcastle Emlyn, Carmarthenshire, the eldest daughter of a lawyer, Benjamin Evans, and Letitia Grace Evans, his wife,
whose father was a lawyer and the grandson of David Davis (1745–1827). Allen Raine's mother was also the granddaughter of Daniel Rowland.
In 1849, she was sent to be educated with the family of a Unitarian minister, Henry Solly, at Cheltenham. Family friends included literati such as George Eliot, Mrs Henry Wood, and Bulwer-Lytton. She later lived in the suburbs of London with her sister Lettie. In her youth she contributed to a short-lived periodical called Home Sunshine, which was produced by friends, the Leslie family, and printed at Newcastle Emlyn.
Marital life
Returning to Wales in 1856, she married the minor artist and banker Beynon Puddicombe at Penbryn Church, Tresaith, Cardiganshire, on 10 April 1872. He was the foreign correspondent of Smith Payne's Bank, London. They lived in the London area until February 1900, when her husband became mentally ill. They then retired to Bronmôr, their summer house in Tresaith until his death in 1906. He died on 29 May and was buried at Penbryn Church.
She remained in Tresaith until her death from breast cancer on 21 June 1908. Cranogwen and Owen Rhoscomyl counted among the many public tributes paid to Allen Raine at the time of her funeral.
