Joan Grant (1907-1989) was an English historical novelist and reincarnationist: “a hippy avant la lettre” (Armitstead, 2007).
Set in Memphis, Egypt, Winged Pharaoh is narrated by the Pharaoh’s daughter, Sekeeta, herself a Pharoah-in-training. It was a critical and commercial success (“beyond all praise ... it is so wise, so beautiful,” according to her friend, Dennis Wheatley), with Grant later claiming that, like all her novels, it was based on one of her own past lives, recovered during a ‘psychometry’ session. In a trance, Grant would dictate memories to her husband (in this instance, Leslie Grant, an archaeologist, who transcribed “115 ‘recall’ sessions which, she said, they pieced together like a jigsaw” (Armitstead, 2007). Later, with her second husband Charles Beatty, however, “she developed a working style that seems to have been more Aleister Crowley than Conan Doyle.” (ibid). Grant referred to her novels as "far memory books" or "previous life autobiographies". Claire Armitstead observes: “Her use of far-seeing narrators is extraordinarily seductive, charming the reader into an identification with her central characters that is also an identification with Grant herself, who presides over the novels like a wise white witch: the more you read the books, the more fascinating their author becomes.”
Grant’s inscribee, alas, remains unidentified.