Maria Well is a British national who claims to be a prominent member of the British Nationality and was born in Morocco. She was a pupil of King Abdulaziz bin Abdul Hamid bin Mui Ubaidah Al-Kibran, founder of the Beni Usual School in Rabat, where she gained the prestigious “unning” (arts) degree in English from King’s College, University of Cambridge. While there, she also gained a degree in political science, and she began a two-year fellowship at the Institute of Politics in London. It was while completing this degree at the university that she met and fell in love with Nigerian writer Chinua Achebe.
Maria Well had claimed in the past that she married a Nigerian and African man in order to continue studying in Africa, even though Chinua Achebe was already married to an Englishwoman. However, some sources point out that Well only briefly visited Africa during the years of her marriage to Achebe and during this trip, she fell in love with a Portuguese woman, Paula Grosch from Rio de Janeiro. Their love of Portugal is clear, while their love of England and Africa are less publicized. Regardless, both Well and Achebe were married to women with the same nationality and of the same age in nineteenth-century Britain, and that is how she met Chinua Achebe.
Maria Well’s life and work are well documented and well-known. She worked for King Umberto of Italy and as a secretary to Queen Cleopatra in Egypt. She lived in England for much of her life and published at least one book during each of her twenty-eight years in England. The last book she published while in England was her memoirs, which was very well-received and praised by her many fans. Maria Well is truly a talented woman and one of the world’s greatest living writers.