GB Stern was born on 17 June 1890 in
North Kensington, London, the second, by some years, of two sisters. She wrote her first novel,
Pantomime, in 1914 at the age of 24. Her first critical success came with
Twos and Threes in 1916. Her most popular books were the series known by the name of the first,
The Matriarch. This was first published as
Tents of Israel in 1924. The others in the series are
A Deputy Was King (1926),
Mosaic (1930),
Shining and Free (1935) and
The Young Matriarch (1942).
The Matriarch series revolved around the Rakonitz and Czelovar families and were based on her own family. They are well-to-do and cosmopolitan Jews who settled in England from Hungary, Poland, Russia, and Austria. Like her family, they suffer through an economic crash. The first book in the series,
The Matriarch, centres around two characters, the matriarch Anastasia and her granddaughter, Toni. Anastasia was based on Stern's great-aunt, who was incensed with the portrayal until the book became successful. The book describes in detail the complicated, florid and noisy life of this Jewish-English family through both triumphs and failures, weddings and funerals. Stern's plays include
The Man Who Pays The Piper (1931), which was revived by the
Orange Tree Theatre in
Richmond, London in 2013. With
Sheila Kaye-Smith she wrote the dialogues
Talking of Jane Austen and
More Talk of Jane Austen. She also wrote a biography of
Robert Louis Stevenson and edited volumes of his works. Her final novel,
Promise Not to Tell, was published in 1964. In 1934,
Long Lost Father was adapted into a
film of the same title by
RKO Pictures. In 1947,
The Woman in the Hall was released as a
film of the same title. In 1966 her 1938 novel
The Ugly Dachshund was made into a
film of the same title. ==Personal life==