author
1840–1936
A prolific Victorian writer, she filled family magazines and bookshelves with spirited stories for young readers, from school tales to historical adventures. Her work blends lively storytelling with the moral tone that shaped so much nineteenth-century popular fiction.

by Grace Stebbing
Born in London in 1840, Grace Stebbing came from a notably literary family. She was the daughter of the clergyman, poet, historian, and editor Henry Stebbing, and her siblings also included published writers and scholars. She wrote under her own name and also used the pseudonym Edward Burton.
Stebbing became a remarkably productive author, contributing to family periodicals such as Girl's Own Paper, The Quiver, and Sunday at Home. She is especially associated with fiction for younger readers, including moral tales, school stories, and historical novels. Sources describe her as an ardent churchwoman who devoted herself early to literature and gave a tithe of her earnings to charitable causes.
She never married and lived a long life, dying in 1936. Although she is less widely known today than some of her Victorian contemporaries, her large body of work offers a vivid glimpse of the values, reading culture, and storytelling styles of late nineteenth-century Britain.