F.M. Mayor

aka Mary Strafford

Flora Macdonald Mayor was an English novelist and short story writer who published under the name F. M. Mayor.

Mayor's father, Joseph Bickersteth Mayor (1828-1916), was an Anglican clergyman and professor of classics and then of moral philosophy at King's College London; her mother, Alexandrina Jessie Grote (1830-1927),[1:] was niece of the utilitarian George Grote as well as the Anglican clergyman and Cambridge moral philosophy professor John Grote. Flora Mayor read history at Newnham College, Cambridge, before becoming an actress. She later turned to writing. In 1903 she became engaged to a young architect, Ernest Shepherd, who died in India of typhoid before Mayor was able to travel out to join him. She never married, and lived closely with her twin sister Alice MacDonald Mayor (1872-1961).

Mayor's first book was a collection of stories, Mrs Hammond's Children, published in 1902 under the pseudonym Mary Strafford. Her short novel, The Third Miss Symons, was published in 1913 with a preface by John Masefield.

Her best known novel is The Rector's Daughter (1924). She also wrote ghost stories, which were much admired by M.R. James. Correspondence and some literary papers are held at Trinity College, Cambridge.