Mabel Greenhow Kitcat chose to publish her short fiction and poetry under the name she acquired from her first marriage rather than the more distinctive one she received from her second husband in 1896. Having written a short novel, A Latter-Day Romance (1893), three years before her second marriage, Kitcat went on to produce stories that appeared in dozens of 1890s periodicals under the name Mrs. Murray Hickson or, occasionally, Mabel Murray Hickson. Eventually collected in volume form, they fall into two categories: the Teddy stories, which are set in a village child's world of river and cricket ground; and more serious portrayals of characters suffering through unhappy marriages. Her short fiction gains substance when she abandons the sentimentality of the Teddy stories to depict the troubled love relationships of mature people.

Mabel Greenhow was born on 2 February 1859 in the Surrey village of Esher, some fifteen miles southwest of London...