[1][2] On her mother's side, she was descended from the aristocratic Poltoratsky family; her maternal grandfather was Serge Poltoratzky, the literary scholar and bibliophile who ended his days in exile, shuttling between France and England.
His second wife, Ellen Sarah Southee, the daughter of an English gentleman farmer, grew up in Kent, and was related to poet Robert Southey.
Despite this, the author was able to attend the Kseniinsky Institute in 1913[2] and eke out a living in the increasingly desperate times of the Russian revolution and civil war.
[6] In parallel, she dabbled in fiction writing with works such as “An Examination in Diplomacy”, before ultimately going on to publish upwards of 60 books over the next several decades.
[7] Almedingen wrote two historical novels: The Lion of the North (1938), about Charles XII of Sweden, and Fair Haven (1956), about Peter the Great.