Vera Chapman

Vera Ivy May Chapman (née Fogerty) (8 May, 1898 - 14 May, 1996, aged 98) was the founder of the Tolkien Society, known by her pseudonym "Belladonna Took". She was also the author of several Arthurian, pseudo-historical and fantasy books.

Vera was born in Bournemouth and lived in South Africa, until she went to Oxford. She studied at Lady Margaret Hall, University of Oxford and was a student of Pr. Joseph Wright. In 1969, she founded The Tolkien Society of which she was Secretary from 1969 to 1976, and persuaded J.R.R. Tolkien to become the Society's Honorary President on June 27, 1972.

Vera wrote throughout her life, attempting to get published without success for many years, but this did not discourage her. Although she liked to say that she "had collected enough rejection slips to paper a whole room!" before she got her first book published, she never gave up. Her first novel, "The Green Knight", an Arthurian tale, was published in 1975, and she continued writing until her death in 1996. Many of her stories remain unpublished, including a monumental "Fate of Jerusalem", a fantasy set during the time of the Crusades. Her best known character is the Abbess of Shaston, heroine of her published collection "The Notorious Abbess", who also appears in The Fate of Jerusalem.