Charlotte Haldane was one of the first newswomen on Fleet Street, a novelist, biographer, political essayist, playwright, music critic, and radio broadcaster--in short, a versatile woman of letters. She was an ardent, albeit quirky, feminist and, in the 1930s, an indefatigable activist for the British Communist Party. Her novels and newspaper articles are a valuable register of British life from the 1920s to the 1950s, especially as it concerned women; her autobiography includes an account of her loss of belief in communism that is as compelling as Stephen Spender's account of his own disillusionment. In spite of these accomplishments, she has received attention from scholars chiefly as the wife of the geneticist J. B. S. Haldane.

Charlotte Franken was born on 27 April 1894 in Sydenham, in south London, to the Jewish immigrants Joseph and Mathilde Saarbach Franken. Her father was a wealthy German fur merchant; her mother, born in...