The Orchid House is a book published in 1953 and the only novel written by Dominican writer Phyllis Shand Allfrey.

[1] The Orchid House is a fictionalized account of Allfrey's early life, narrated by an old Black nurse Lally from Montserrat.

Originally published by Constable & Co., it was reissued in 1982 by Virago Press, and reprinted in 1991 at the time its Channel 4 television adaptation of the same name came out (directed by Horace Ové with Casting Director John Hubbard[2] and starring Elizabeth Hurley, Madge Sinclair, Diana Quick, Kate Buffery, Lennox Honychurch, British painter and grand-niece of Phyllis Shand Allfrey, Lindy Allfrey[3] and Frances Barber.

A French-language version, La Maison des Orchidées, appeared in 1954.

[6] Summarized in an Introduction by Lizabeth Paravisini-Gebert, "The novel, as narrated by the old nurse Lally, revolves around the return of three Creole sisters to their native island after years abroad: Stella, drawn to the lush tropical by an impassioned yearning; Joan, a grass-roots political activist in London; and Natalie, a wealthy old man's hedonistic widow..."[7] This article about a historical novel of the 1950s is a stub.