Question: The Lady and the Highwayman was based on a novel by which English author?

Context articles: Babalon
Agnes Grey
Barbara Cartland
The Lady and the Highwayman
Neverwhere (novel)
Katherine Ferrers
The Highwayman (1951 film)
Esther Meynell
E. M. Delafield
Frank Mottershaw

Babalon (also known as the Scarlet Woman, Great Mother or Mother of Abominations) is a goddess found in the mystical system of Thelema, which was established in 1904 with English author and occultist Aleister Crowley's writing of "The Book of the Law", her name being later given in other works.
 In her most abstract form, she represents the female sexual impulse and the liberated woman.
 In the creed of the Gnostic Mass she is also identified with Mother Earth, in her most fertile sense.
 At the same time, Crowley believed that Babalon had an earthly aspect in the form of a spiritual office, which could be filled by actual women—usually as a counterpart to his own identification as "To Mega Therion" (The Great Beast)—whose duty was then to help manifest the energies of the current Aeon of Horus.
 He believed in his life the Lady of Babalon was personified as Lady Leah Hirsig, who, after several portraits, was consecrated, taking the name Alostrael.
Agnes Grey is the debut novel of English author Anne Brontë (writing under the pen name of Acton Bell), first published in December 1847, and republished in a second edition in 1850.
 The novel follows Agnes Grey, a governess, as she works within families of the English gentry.
 Scholarship and comments by Anne's sister Charlotte Brontë suggest the novel is largely based on Anne Brontë's own experiences as a governess for five years.
 Like her sister Charlotte's novel "Jane Eyre", it addresses what the precarious position of governess entailed and how it affected a young woman.
Dame Mary Barbara Hamilton Cartland DBE CStJ (9 July 1901 – 21 May 2000) was an English author of romance novels, one of the best-selling authors as well as one of the most prolific and commercially successful worldwide of the twentieth century.
 Her 723 novels were translated into 38 languages and she continues to be referenced in the "Guinness World Records" for the most novels published in a single year in 1976.
 As Barbara Cartland she is known for her numerous romantic novels but she also wrote under her married name of Barbara McCorquodale and briefly under the pseudonym of Marcus Belfry.
 She wrote more than 700 books, as well as plays, music, verse, drama, magazine articles and operetta, and was a prominent philanthropist.
 She reportedly sold more than 750 million copies.
 Other sources estimate her book sales at more than two billion copies.
 She specialised in 19th-century Victorian era pure romance.
 Her novels all featured portrait-style artwork, particularly the cover art, usually designed by Frances Marshall.
The Lady and the Highwayman is a 1989 United Kingdom romantic adventure TV movie based on Barbara Cartland's romance novel "Cupid Rides Pillion".
 The working title of the film was "Dangerous Love".
Neverwhere is the companion novelisation written by English author Neil Gaiman of the television serial "Neverwhere", by Gaiman and Lenny Henry.
 The plot and characters are exactly the same as in the series, with the exception that the novel form allowed Gaiman to expand and elaborate on certain elements of the story and restore changes made in the televised version from his original plans.
 Most notable is the appearance of the Floating Market at Harrods (in the novel) rather than under Battersea power station (the TV series).
 This is because the management of Harrods changed their minds about proposed filming.
 The novel was originally released by BBC Books in 1996, three episodes into the television series run.
 It was accompanied by a spoken word CD and cassette release, also by the BBC.
 The novel enjoyed great success, whereas its television roots did not receive as much international exposure as the novel.
 In addition to being translated into various languages, it was also re-published as an 'Author's Preferred Text' version, (a combination of the international and original English version, with additional scenes re-inserted by Gaiman) alongside "American Gods" in 2006.
 The original BBC Books version had a cover by longtime Gaiman collaborator Dave McKean, taken from the birds head rings, flaming fist and London Underground styled graphics created by McKean for the series, as well as a brief section by Gaiman on the making of the series.
Katherine Ferrers (4 May 1634 – c. 13 June 1660) was an English gentlewoman and heiress.
 According to popular legend, she was also the "Wicked Lady", a female highwayman who terrorised the English county of Hertfordshire before dying from gunshot wounds sustained during a robbery.
The Highwayman is a 1951 Cinecolor film based on the poem of the same name by Alfred Noyes.
 Noyes wrote in his autobiography that he was pleasantly surprised by "the fact that in this picture, produced in Hollywood, the poem itself is used and followed with the most artistic care".
 Released by Allied Artists who acquired the rights to Noyes' poem, the film was released in the same year as Columbia Pictures' "Dick Turpin's Ride"/"The Lady and the Bandit" also based on a poem by Noyes.
 Portions of the film were shot at Corriganville movie ranch.
Esther Hallam Meynell (née Moorhouse) (1878 in Leeds – 4 February 1955 in Brighton, Sussex), was an English author.
 She is best known for her "The Little Chronicle of Magdalena Bach", a fictional autobiography of Anna Magdalena Bach, the wife of composer Johann Sebastian Bach, and "Nelson’s Lady Hamilton", a book about the life of Emma, Lady Hamilton, mistress of Lord Nelson.
 There are also many books by her about Sussex, where she lived.
 On the other hand, her "Time's Door" belongs to the genre of science fiction due to its theme of time travel.
 Meynell was the niece by marriage of the poet and suffragette Alice Meynell.
Edmée Elizabeth Monica Dashwood, née de la Pasture (9 June 1890 – 2 December 1943), commonly known as E. M. Delafield, was a prolific English author.
 She is best known for her largely autobiographical "Diary of a Provincial Lady", which took the form of a journal of the life of an upper-middle class Englishwoman living mostly in a Devon village of the 1930s.
 In sequels, the Provincial Lady buys a flat in London, travels to America, attempts to find war-work during the Phoney War, and tours the Soviet Union.
Frank Mottershaw (1850–1932) (often confused with his second son, Frank Storm Mottershaw) was an early English cinema director based in Sheffield, Yorkshire.
 His films, "A Daring Daylight Burglary" and "The Robbery of the Mail Coach" (featuring a protagonist based on Jack Sheppard, the infamous 18th-century English highwayman), made in April and September 1903, are regarded as highly influential on the development of Edwin Porter’s paradigmatic "chase film" "The Great Train Robbery", of December 1903, and often claimed as the prototype of the action film.
 The uniqueness of Mottershaw's "A Daring Daylight Burglary" is seen as the way it tracks a single action through changing locations.
 Henry Jasper Redfern and Mottershaw made the first motion pictures filmed outdoors in Sheffield.