John Strange Winter

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Best known for her early military fiction, JSW (nom de plume of Henrietta Palmer, later Stannard) was a prolific and popular author of over a hundred novels and volumes of short stories. Writing in the late nineteenth and very early twentieth centuries, she also produced a journal, Winter's Weekly, editing it from 1891 to 1894 and possibly acting as owner and publisher until 1895. JSW 's work, while not innovative in form or content, is engaging. It often provides an insight into the middle class that composed much of her audience, and to which she herself belonged.
Black and white, oval photograph of John Strange Winter. Her face is in profile, her body turned a little to the right. Her curly hair is styled in a fringe in front and a bun behind. She is wearing a black dress with a tulle-like fabric at the neck. Her signature is reproduced below: "Ever yours, H. E. V. Stannard".

Milestones

13 January 1856
Henrietta Eliza Vaughan Palmer, later JSW , was born at The Cottage, Trinity Lane, York.
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray, Brian Harrison, and Lawrence Goldman, editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.
Bainbridge, Oliver, and Alfred Edward Turner. John Strange Winter: A Volume of Personal Record. East and West, 1916.
2
1870
Henrietta Palmer (who later wrote as JSW ) attempted to publish her first literary venture, a story entitled either Clotilde's Vengeance or The Story of the French Revolution, at the age of fourteen.
In a piece in Jerome K. Jerome 's My First Book, JSW stated that her first book (self-published on the nursery floor) was a story about three soldiers and a pig. This piece is not mentioned in Oliver Bainbridge 's biography of Winter, and it is unclear when it was produced.
Jerome, Jerome K., editor. My First Book. Chatto and Windus, 1894.
239
Bainbridge, Oliver, and Alfred Edward Turner. John Strange Winter: A Volume of Personal Record. East and West, 1916.
6
Spring 1885
Bootles' Baby: A Story of the Scarlet Lancers, probably JSW 's best-known work, was serialised in The Graphic magazine. It appeared in volume form the same year.
OCLC WorldCat.
Blain, Virginia, Patricia Clements, and Isobel Grundy, editors. The Feminist Companion to Literature in English: Women Writers from the Middle Ages to the Present. Yale University Press; Batsford, 1990.
1891 to September 1894
JSW launched and edited an illustrated penny weekly magazine. It was initially called Golden Gates, but this title was felt to be too religious, and was eventually changed to Winter's Weekly.
Black, Helen C. Notable Women Authors of the Day. Maclaren, 1906.
56
Ashton, Owen. “Henrietta Stannard and the Social Emancipation of Women, 1890-1910”. The Duty of Discontent: Essays for Dorothy Thompson, edited by Owen Ashton, Robert Fyson, and Stephen Roberts, Mansell, 1995, pp. 167 - 90.
175
13 December 1911
Henrietta Stannard (JSW ) died at her home, York House, at Putney on the outskirts of London.
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray, Brian Harrison, and Lawrence Goldman, editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.
By 12 September 1912
It appears that JSW 's last original novel was Miss Peggy: The Story of a Very Modern Girl, published posthumously the year after her death.
OCLC WorldCat.
TLS Centenary Archive Centenary Archive [1902-2012].
557 (12 September 1912): 360

Biography

Birth

13 January 1856
Henrietta Eliza Vaughan Palmer, later JSW , was born at The Cottage, Trinity Lane, York.
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray, Brian Harrison, and Lawrence Goldman, editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.
Bainbridge, Oliver, and Alfred Edward Turner. John Strange Winter: A Volume of Personal Record. East and West, 1916.
2

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