author

Julia de Winton

A prolific Victorian novelist, she published under the name Julia de Winton and wrote domestic fiction filled with family tensions, society, and strong-willed women. Her best-known books include Margaret and Her Bridesmaids and The Valley of a Hundred Fires.

1 Audiobook

Yr Ynys Unyg

Yr Ynys Unyg

by Julia de Winton

About the author

Born Julia Cecilia Collinson in 1812, she was an English novelist who is often listed as Julia Cecilia Stretton and also wrote under the name Julia de Winton. After marrying Walter Wilkins in 1831, she later adopted the de Winton name with him; after his death, she married William Richard Stretton in 1857.

Her first known book was the children's story Yr Ynys Unyg: or, The Lonely Island in 1852. She went on to publish a steady run of novels through the 1850s and 1860s, including Woman's Devotion, Margaret and Her Bridesmaids, The Lady of Glynne, The Ladies of Lovel-Leigh, Lords and Ladies, and Three Wives.

She also contributed two stories to Somebody's Luggage, the 1862 Christmas issue of Charles Dickens's All the Year Round. She died in 1878, but her work still offers a lively window into Victorian popular fiction and the reading tastes of her time.