Edith Allonby was an English writer and teacher. (Her surname was occasionally spelled Allanby or Allenby.) She created two novels set on a fictional planet before committing suicide in an attempt to draw attention to her third work. Allonby was born in Cark as the daughter of Joshua Allonby and Jane Deborah Orr Allonby. Her mother died while she was a little child. She attended Whitelands College. Allonby worked as a teacher and schoolmistress at St. Anne's National School in Lancaster. She wrote three novels, Jewell Sowers (1903), Marigold (1905), and The Fulfillment (1905). Frustrated by editors' requests for modifications and the lack of attention her prior novels received, she committed herself by consuming carbolic acid in Lancaster in 1905, at the age of 29. She had obtained three bottles of the poison by sending an aide to buy each one, claiming that it was required for a school lesson. Her suicide note, which concluded with the phrase "I have died to give God's gift to the world with as few stumbling blocks as possible," was extensively circulated, notably in The London Standard and The New York Times. Within months of her death, The Fulfilment was published, with minor editing and annotations added.