John Strange Winter (1856–1911)

John Strange Winter was the pen name of Henrietta Eliza Vaughan Palmer Stannard, born in York, England. Her father Henry Vaughan Palmer was a clergyman who had previously been an officer in the British army and was descended from several generations of soldiers. She was educated at Bootham House School in York. She became a prolific and popular author of more than 100 novels and volumes of short stories and is best known for her early military fiction. In 1874, while still in her teens, she made her literary debut, writing under the pseudonym "Violet Whyte" for the Family Herald. In 1881, she published Cavalry Life, a collection of sketches, followed by Regimental Legends in 1883. Her publisher insisted on a masculine pseudonym for the books, and the public assumed the author to be an army officer. In 1884, she married Arthur Stannard, a civil engineer, with whom she had four children. She also edited an illustrated magazine, Winter's Weekly, from 1891 to 1894, and was a member of literary and artistic circles in London.