Louisa Jebb Wilkins

Born Louisa Jebb in Shropshire in 1873, she wrote under the name Louisa Wilkins and also became known as Mrs. Roland Wilkins. She studied agriculture at Cambridge, a background that would shape much of her later public work as well as her writing.

Her books drew on firsthand travel, including journeys through the Ottoman world and to Baghdad, giving readers a lively sense of movement, place, and curiosity. Alongside her literary work, she played an important role in agricultural administration and was involved in the creation and recruitment of the Women's Land Army during the First World War.

After the war, she continued to support women's work on the land and remained closely connected to ideas of smallholding and rural opportunity. That mix of practical reform, independence, and travel-minded storytelling gives her work a distinctive character today.