Penelope Delta (1874–1941)

Penelope Delta was born in Alexandria, Egypt, to Emmanuel Benakis, a wealthy cotton merchant, and his wife Virginia Choremi. She had five siblings whose antics she later immortalized in her writing. When she was eight years old, the family went to live in Athens, Greece. In 1895, she married Stephanos Delta, a wealthy Greek businessman with whom she had three daughters. In 1906, they moved to Frankfurt, Germany for her husband's business. There she published her first novel, Gia tin Patrida (For the Sake of the Fatherland) in 1909. She became one of the earliest, and the most prolific, writers in Greek of children’s books and historical novels for teenage readers. In researching her first book, set in the Byzantine Empire, she began corresponding with historian Gustave Schlumberger, and their continued interaction provided material for her second novel, Ton Kairo tou Voulgaroktonou (In the Years of the Bulgar-Slayer). In 1916, she settled permanently in Athens, where her father had been elected Mayor. In 1925, she contracted polio, which paralyzed her for the rest of her life. Three of her novels based on her own family have been read by generations of children: Trellantonis (Crazy Antonis, 1932), Mangas (1935), and Ta Mystika tou Valtou (The Secrets of the Swamp, 1937). She took poison on April 27, 1941, devastated by Nazi Germany's invasion of her beloved Athens, and died several days later.