Rose Allatini is remembered today for writing ‘Despised and Rejected’, the only novel to be prosecuted under the Defence of the Realm Act during the Great War as `liable to prejudice recruiting in His Majesty’s forces. The book’s positive depiction of homosexuals and conscientious objectors alarmed the wartime authorities.But Rose Allatini was also the author (under several disguises) of nearly forty other novels, over seven decades. This monograph sets out to dispel the myth that these other books were no more than romantic pot-boilers. The novels’ themes include: critiques of the position of women in London and Vienna at the start of the twentieth century; an exploration of the experience of mental illness; warnings of the rise of Nazism in thirties Austria, depictions of the experiences of refugees in London during the Second World War; and speculations about spiritual healing. Rose Allatini was a novelist who went where many others did not care to venture.
