Ethel Voynich
Ethel Lilian Voynich, née Boole (May 11, 1864, County Cork, Ireland - July 27, 1960, New York City) was a novelist and a musician, and a supporter of several revolutionary causes. Her father was a famous mathematician, George Boole. She was married to Wilfrid Michael Voynich.
She is most famous for her novel The Gadfly, first published in (1897) in USA (June) and England (September), about the struggles of an international revolutionary in Italy. This novel was very popular in the Soviet Union and was the top best seller and compulsory reading there, and it was seen as ideologically useful. By the time of her death it had sold an estimated 2,500,000 copies there. For similar reasons, the novel has been popular in China as well.
In 1953, the Soviet Union adapted this novel to a film of the same title (Russian: Ovod). Dmitri Shostakovitch created an extensive composition for the film. The Romance, a segment from this composition, along with some other excerpts, has since become very popular.