July 1, 1884

Naomi Ellington Jacob (July 1, 1884 to August 27, 1964), was a writer born in Yorkshire to a schoolmaster and his wife, who herself was an author. Before the success of her first novel, Jacob Ussher (1925), Naomi Jacob had worked as an actress and pursued fashionable causes, including converting to Roman Catholicism. In 1930, because of recurrent health problems (the British love to say this) she moved to Italy. Radclyffe Hall, a close friend, visited often at Jacob's villa in Sirmione.

Based in Italy now, she published multiple novels, referred to as the Gollantz series, which became very popular during the 1930s. Her stories after the war conspicuously focused on the settings of her childhood, though she had returned to Italy.

Jacob was very fond of cats. In one of her series of memoir styled essays, More About Me, (1946), she mentions an Italian friend who wanted to give her, THREE kittens, already named: Ping, Pang, and Pong.

According to her Oxford Dictionary of Biography article, the source of most of the above, (not the snark): "Her books still claim a wide readership.