The career of Winifred Ashton, who published under the pseudonym Clemence Dane--taken from the church of St. Clements Dane, in The Strand--extended over nearly half a century. She long entertained the public with a variety of fiction, plays, screenplays, and other writing but never seemed to outshine popular women novelists such as Daphne du Maurier and Dorothy Sayers. Critics were always hoping that she would create something as sensational as her first novel but more profound, that she would, as the drama historian Allardyce Nicoll put it, transcend the "appeal to broadly popular audiences" and "gradually develop a taste for caviare." Regiment of Women got her off to a fast start in fiction. Plays such as A Bill of Divorcement (1921) and Granite (1926) had good runs. Her short stories and nonfiction writing were respectfully received. Moreover, she took to the new media and reached millions with her radio and...