Frances Winwar

Frances Winwar (née Francesca Vinciguerra; 3 May 1900 – 24 July 1985), was a Sicilian-born American biographer, translator, and fiction writer.

Early life Winwar was born Francesca Vinciguerra in Taormina, Sicily and came to the United States through Ellis Island in June 1907. Her pseudonym Winwar is an calque of her birth name; she was required to change her name as a condition of publishing her first book. She was the daughter of Domenico Vinciguerra and the singer Giovanna Sciglio and after emigrating to the United States the family settled in New York. Winwar studied at Hunter College and Columbia University.

In the 1930s and 1940s, Winwar was an outspoken opponent of Italian Fascism.

Selected published works

Family Her husbands were:

V.J. Jerome (né Jerome Isaac Romaine; 1896–1965), writer, communist propagandist (married 1919); Bernard David N. Brebanier (1903–1977), educator (married 1925; divorced 1942); Richard Wilson Webb (1901–1966), mystery novelist