Dorothea Townshend (born Letitia Jane Dorothea Baker) was a British novelist, biographer, children's author, and poet active during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Born in Staffordshire in 1852, she was the daughter of the Reverend Ralph Bourne Baker and Frances Crofton Singer, whose father was the Bishop of Meath. In 1881, she married Richard Baxter Townshend, an officer in the Madras Native Infantry and an author in his own right.
Townshend's literary output was diverse, spanning historical fiction, children's literature, biography, and poetry. She wrote several historical novels set in England and Ireland, including The Strange Adventures of a Young Lady of Quality (1893), A Lost Leader: A Tale of Restoration Days (1902), and A Saint George of King Charles's Day (1906). Her children's fiction often incorporated elements of folklore, as seen in The Children of Nugentstown and their dealings with the Sidhe (1911), which follows three children who encounter fairies.
In addition to her fiction, Townshend was a dedicated biographer, publishing accounts of notable historical figures such as Endymion Porter, Richard Boyle, the 1st Earl of Cork, and George Digby, the 2nd Earl of Bristol. Her posthumous poetry collection, Broken Lights, was published in 1932, two years after her death on November 30, 1930.
