| Julia Constance Fletcher | |
| Birth Date: | 1853 |
| Birth Place: | Brazil |
| Death Date: | 1938 |
| Other Names: | George Fleming |
| Alma Mater: | Abbot Academy Andover, Massachusetts |
| Occupation: | Author |
Julia Constance Fletcher (1853 - 1938)[1] was an author and playwright who professionally went by the pseudonym of George Fleming.
She was born in Brazil in 1853,[2] the daughter of James Cooley Fletcher (1823-1901) and granddaughter of the banker Calvin Fletcher. Her mother was Henriette Malan, the daughter of a Swiss clergyman.[3] She went to Abbot Academy, in Andover, Massachusetts, and was in the class of 1867.[4]
After her parents' divorce, Julia went to live with her mother in Venice. Henriette had remarried, her second husband being a painter, Eugene Benson. Julia also spent some time in London.[3] One of the sponsors of her early novels was Alfred Sassoon, a junior member of the wealthy Sassoon family and the father of Siegfried Sassoon. Alfred's infatuation with Julia was the catalyst for his desertion of his wife, Theresa.[5] Julia's other supporters included her grandfather's friend Henry James, and she also knew Rudyard Kipling, Robert Browning and Walter Pater.[3]
Two of her books, Kismet and Mirage, were published as "no name novels" by Roberts Brothers in Boston.[6] Both books deal with Americans' adventures while traveling abroad, along the Nile and in Syria, respectively. Mirage has been described by Oscar Wilde scholar S. I. Salamensky, as a roman-á-clef fiction in which "a dangerously appealing, if slightly bi- or asexual, figure based on Wilde romantically pursues" a woman who is thought to represent Fletcher.[7]
In 1900 she wrote a translation/adaptation of Edmond Rostand's play Les Romanesques, which she titled The Fantasticks. The 1960 musical of the same name, also based on Les Romanesques, borrows heavily from Fletcher's version.