Alice Diehl was born Alice Georgina Mangold in Aveley, Essex, at the house of her maternal grandfather, Charles Vidal, a village doctor born in Jamaica, who had practised in Aveley since 1804.
[5][2] As a child, Alice had had two books of her poems published, so that her switch to writing in about 1872 was a return to an earlier interest.
The idea that she should become a professional pianist had arisen when her father showed some signs of mental instability and her grandfather viewed this as a source of family income.
From the early 1880s onwards she produced almost 50 novels, including Griselda (1886), which has been described by a recent critic as "a heavy-handed story of womanly self-sacrifice".
[2] A Thurrock Heritage plaque to Alice Diehl was unveiled on 23 January 2010 at the Aveley Christian Centre, Stifford Road.