Violet Targuse

[9][5][10] (Exceptions to this are Prelude, which revolves around the life of Anne Boleyn,[11] and Auld Lang Syne, which is set in Scotland and based on the novel Nancy Stair by Elinor Macartney Lane).

[12] During the second half of the 20th century, Targuse's plays slowly disappeared from repertoires,[13] until her work received renewed attention–initially by feminist scholars–starting since the 1990s.

[18] She worked first as a nursemaid, then at the department store Ballantynes in Timaru, where she met her future husband Alfred George Targuse (1878–1944).

In 1932, her plays Fear and Touchstone won first-place-equal in the first playwriting competition held by the New Zealand branch of the British Drama League.

[22] British actress Dame Sybil Thorndike praised Fear and Touchstone as "highly dramatic, novel situations, and full of a life that must be expressed.