The sister of Laurence and A.E. Housman, Clemence was educated at home by a governess and thereafter did much of her solicitor father's clerical work. In 1883, she went to London with her younger brother Laurence and studied wood engraving at the London Technical Art School at Kennington and subsequently at the Millers' Lane City and Guilds School. She was employed as an engraver by various papers including the Illustrated London News and The Graphic, but later, when wood engraving was replaced by photomechnical processes at magazines and newspapers, she took her craft to book publishers with a good deal of success. During her time at Kennington she wrote her first novel, The Were-Wolf, which was subsequently published in 1896 and illustrated by her brother Laurence. H.P. Lovecraft praised the work and felt it to be the greatest work on lycanthropy ever written. Clemence would only write two more novels, The Unknown Sea (1898) and The Life of Sir Aglovale de Galis (1905), before turning her energies to the Women's Suffragette movement. In 1909, she was a co-founder of the Suffrage Atelier and in 1910 became a member of the Tax Resistance League. She was arrested in 1911 and spent a week in jail for failure to pay estate duties. Clemence and her brother were very close and spent their entire lives living together, Laurence caring for her in her final years of senility. The only other work by Clemence appears to be a short story, The Drawn Arrow, which was published in an anthology in 1923. |
