Author profiles

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W Y

Julia Stretton

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JS published both children's books and adult novels during the latter half of the nineteenth century. Her final novel comments amusingly and astutely on gender relations and the writing of novels.

Agnes Strickland

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AS , writing in the middle nineteenth century, won renown as a historian and biographer, particularly of the British royal family and particularly of its female members. In fact all of these books were co-authored...
Agnes Strickland Photograph of a painting of Agnes Strickland by John Hayes, 1846. She is seated with her elbow resting on a wooden table. She is wearing a black velvet dress that laces at the front, over a cream coloured shirt that is trimmed with ruffles. Her sleeves are trimmed with cream coloured lace and pearls, and she is wearing a matching pearl bracelet. Her dark hair is curly, and partly pulled back. She holds a small paper scroll with early-period writing on it, and perhaps a seal. National Portrait Gallery.

Elizabeth Strickland

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ES published her earliest children's book under her name, though her periodical editing was anonymous. But although a number of women writers in various generations have chosen anonymity or obscurity, she is extraordinary in seeking...

Jan Struther

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JS began to write during the 1920s as a contributor of poems and sketches to journals. She also wrote some still-popular hymns, and edited and wrote for children. She hit the jackpot with her Mrs...
Jan Struther Black-and-white photo of Jan Struther, 28 June 1946. Wearing a patterned dress, she is sitting on the grass and looking down at a small, leashed dog beside her.

Elizabeth Strutt

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As a novelist and travel-writer and in one book of at least semi-feminist debate, ES seems to be addressing women; but when she writes on religion she takes men as her subject. With only one...

Lady Arbella Stuart

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LAS , writing in the dangerous years of the late-sixteenth and early-seventeenth century, was a remarkable letter-writer and also a poet.
Lady Arbella Stuart Black and white photo of a half-length oval painting of Lady Arbella Stuart perhaps by Robert Peake the elder. Facing forward in a stiff pose, she wears a dark bodice with white bead detail around the waist and down the front, and white lace collar surrounding a white ruff. She has a little dog tucked under her left arm; her right hand holds an ornate lidded watch, to signify that time is fleeting and life short. Her dark chestnut hair, brushed back, has a black cap on top and decoration hanging along her f

Lady Louisa Stuart

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LLS , writing in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, published almost nothing deliberately. It was mostly after her death that her writings filtered into print. Her poems show an acute and original mind...
Lady Louisa Stuart Photograph of a sketch of Lady Louisa Stuart in old age by Sir George Hayter. She sits solitary, wearing a simple dark dress and lacy cap, in a small, dimly lit room with curtains draped in the window, in a large chair at a table strewn with books and other objects. She is hunched over one book, holding it very close to her eyes in the effort of reading. An inscription below, in capitals, names sitter, artist, and owner.

Maud Sulter

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MS was a Black British poet, journalist, artist and political activist; she often produced visual and written works in linked pairs. In her poetry, her photographs, her artworks, and her essays, novel, and play, she...

Leah Sumbel

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LS , an actress of the later eighteenth century, became a remarkable memoirist as well as a journalist and a dabbler in writing for the stage. Her account of her life may be grouped with...
Leah Sumbel Photo of a full-length painting of Leah Sumbel by Samuel de Wilde, performing (under her original name, Mary Wells) as Anne Lovely in Susannah Centlivre's "A Bold Stroke for a Wife". She stands on stage, wearing a long, plain grey dress laced up the bodice, its square neckline filled with a fichu, Her hair is powdered under a tall mob cap with a blue ribbon, and she holds a paper in her hands.

Dorothy Sidney Countess of Sunderland

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While Dorothy, Countess of Sunderland , has been known historically as the Sacharissa of Edmund Waller 's poetry, she was also a respected and memorable letter writer. Most of her surviving letters date from her...

Rosemary Sutcliff

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RS , historical novelist, overcame disability to publish, over a span of forty years from 1950, more than fifty titles. Most are books for the young (billed for those of eleven and upwards, but having...

Alice Sutcliffe

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AS was an early seventeenth-century religious writer in prose (meditations, a more private form of sermons) and poetry who, unusually for her rank and gender, allowed her work to be printed bearing her own name...

Annie S. Swan

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By the age of forty, just before the twentieth century began, ASS had published probably over thirty books.
Black, Helen C. Pen, Pencil, Baton and Mask: Biographical Sketches. Spottiswoode, 1896.
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She claimed not to know her lifetime total, but it must have been approaching two hundred...
Annie S. Swan Black and white photograph of Annie S. Swan, shown from the shoulders up. She is wearing a collared shirt with dark, wavy, chin-length hair.

Anna Swanwick

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Publishing in the mid and later nineteenth century, AS won fame firstly as a scholar and translator from German and then from ancient Greek. Her work for social causes (especially for the cause of women)...
Anna Swanwick Photograph of Anna Swanwick's grave marker. The marker is a high light grey column, with lists of names carved into each of the sides and painted in black.

Henrietta Sykes

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HS published two novels and a collection of shorter fictions with the Minerva Press during the early nineteenth century. She did not put her name on title-pages. A volume of poems and songs has been...

John Millington Synge

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JMS began publishing early in the twentieth century under the influence of the Irish revival. During his short life he wrote several plays that have remained in the repertoire, while his study of the Aran...
John Millington Synge Photograph of oil painting of John Millington Synge, with a gold frame. Synge is wearing a black suit and vest, black tie, and white collared shirt, and he is looking directly at the viewer. His hands appear to be adjusting his suit.

Catherine Talbot

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CT was a member of the eighteenth-century Bluestocking group. Most remarkable among her poetry and prose (essays and other non-fiction pieces, a fairy story and letters) are the poems of love and loss which have...
Catherine Talbot Colour photograph of an oval miniature of Catherine Talbot by Christian Friedrich Zincke. She is seen from the shoulders up, against a pale blue background. She is wearing a white bodice with a lace-trimmed square neckline, blue lacing, and two blue bows. Her curly dark hair is pulled loosely back and decorated with a blue bow or flower. On the back is inscribed "Catherine Talbot. / celebrated / for her genius and piety. / died unmarried. / 1770./ Zincke."

Eleanor Tatlock

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ET is an earnestly religious poet of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century, with some humour and some feminist consciousness. She writes narrative poems, hymns, odes, and fables.