Dawn Langley Pepita Simmons (15 October 1937 – 18 September 2000) was a prolific English author and biographer. Born "Gordon Langley Hall", Simmons lived her first decades as a male. As a young adult, she was adopted by Margaret Rutherford, who was the subject of a biography Simmons wrote in later years. After sex reassignment surgery in 1968, Simmons was married in the first legal interracial marriage in South Carolina.
Simmons' parents were ser...
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Dawn Langley Pepita Simmons (15 October 1937 – 18 September 2000) was a prolific English author and biographer. Born "Gordon Langley Hall", Simmons lived her first decades as a male. As a young adult, she was adopted by Margaret Rutherford, who was the subject of a biography Simmons wrote in later years. After sex reassignment surgery in 1968, Simmons was married in the first legal interracial marriage in South Carolina.
Simmons' parents were servants at Sissinghurst Castle, the English estate of biographer Harold Nicolson and his novelist wife, Vita Sackville-West. Simmons was born in Sussex as "Gordon Langley Hall" to Jack Copper, Vita Sackville-West's chauffeur, and another servant, Marjorie Hall Ticehurst, before they were married.
As a child, Simmons was raised by her grandmother and at one point visited the castle and met Virginia Woolf, Sackville-West's lover. Woolf made Sackville-West the subject of the novel Orlando: A Biography, which bears a striking resemblance to Simmons'...
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