Mary Patricia "Mollie" Panter-Downes (25 August 1906 – 22 January 1997) was a British novelist and columnist for The New Yorker. Aged sixteen, she wrote The Shoreless Sea which became a bestseller and was serialised in The Daily Mirror. Her second novel The Chase was published in 1925.
Panter-Downes was born to Major Edward Martin Panter-Downes (died 1914 at Mons) and Marie Kathleen Cowley, who was of Irish origin.[1]
In 1922, aged sixteen, Panter-Downes wrote The Shoreless Sea which became a bestseller; eight editions were published in 1923 and 1924, and the book was serialised in The Daily Mirror. Her second novel The Chase was published in 1925.
In 1938, Panter-Downes began writing for The New Yorker, first a series of short stories, and from September 1939, a column entitled Letter from London, which she wrote until 1984. The collected columns were later published as Letters from England (1940) and London War Notes (1972).[2]
Panter-Downes visited Ootacamund, in India, and wrote about the town, known to all as Ooty, in her New Yorker columns. This material was later published as Ooty Preserved.
Panter-Downes married Clare Robinson in 1927 and the couple moved to Surrey.[2]
She died in Compton, Surrey, aged 90.[2]
The last short story in Minnie's Room, called "The Empty Place" and written in 1965, has a character called Harry Potter.