Lucia Mantu (pen name of Camelia Nădejde; September 22, 1888 – November 1971) was a Romanian prose writer. Born in Iași, her parents were and his wife Ecaterina (née Băncilă); she was a niece of and Sofia Nădejde, as well as of Octav Băncilă. The couple's second child, she began her education at home under her older brother's supervision, and was privately educated until completing high school in 1907. Although she had shown an inclination toward literature, she entered the natural sciences faculty of Iași University, attracted by prestigious faculty members who included Paul Bujor and Ion Th. Simionescu. She graduated in 1911, and in 1914, she became a science teacher at Oltea Doamna girls' high school in Iași. In 1913, her brother, a combat medic in the Second Balkan War, had accidenta