Writer and publisher Florence I. Duncan (1849-1906) was born in New York. After the death of her mother when she was seven, her father, John Donlevy, married Harriet Farley (editor of the Lowell Offering). Duncan married Canadian bookseller and printer Thomas Duncan; they had four daughters and lived in Ottawa. After the marriage failed, she moved to Philadelphia in 1876 where she published a society and family journal called Quiz (1880-1884), as well as a number of books including My Intimate Friend (1878).
In 1884 she married Arthur Grey, a penniless British aristocrat estranged from his family. She persuaded him to contact his mother, and they moved to England in 1885. Eventually abandoned by him and his family, Florence tried to support her children by writing for the St. Stephen's Review and other periodicals. Increasingly exhausted, she returned to the United States, settling in Chicago where she struggled to regain a position in journalism. Involved in numerous political and social causes, she became part of the Society of Friends of Russian Freedom, a group supporting the revolutionary movement in Russia. Duncan died in Chicago in 1906.
From the description of Papers of Florence I. Duncan, 1905. (Harvard University). WorldCat record id: 542726920
