A Welsh singer: a novel

Anne Adalisa Puddicombe, also known as Allen Raine, was a romantic novelist from Newcastle Emlyn, Ceredigion. At thirteen years of age she and her sister were sent to Cheltenham and Wandsworth, where they were educated by the family of Henry Solly, a Unitarian minister. She lived in London for a brief period with her husband, but later returned to her native area. At the National Eisteddfod of 1894 she was awarded first prize for her story that depicted a rural Welsh community. With growing confidence she continued to write, and finished her novel ‘Mifanwy’ in June 1896. Puddicombe’s work was rejected by six publishers, causing her to change the volume’s title to ‘A Welsh Singer, by Allen Raine’, which was published and successfully sold. Puddicombe, under the name Allen Raine, became one of Wales’s most popular novelists and produced many novels in quick succession. All of her publications, fully or partly, were located in small rural villages on the west coast of Wales and centred around the folk of the area.