Mrs. Frederic West

Born Theresa Whitby in 1806, she was a British writer who published as Mrs. F. West after marrying Frederick Richard West in 1827. She was the daughter of Royal Navy captain John Whitby, and she outlived her husband, dying in 1886.

Her best-known book is A Summer Visit to Ireland in 1846 (1847), a travel account written during the opening phase of the Irish Famine. Readers and historians have valued it as a revealing record of what an English upper-class visitor saw in Ireland at that moment, including both its observations and its biases.

She also wrote fiction for different audiences, including books for children and young adults, and an adult novel, The Doom of Doolandour. Other works linked with her include Frescoes and Sketches from Memory, All for an Ideal, and God's Arithmetic: with other stories for the young.