Winifred Stephens

Winifred Stephens Whale (30 January 1870 - 8 September 1944 ) was an English teacher, author, editor, journalist, and translator.

Early life Sophia Charlotte Winifred Stephens was born in Naunton, Gloucestershire on 30 January 1870, to Catherine and Reverend J. M. Stephens. The following year, with Edward Clodd and Clement Shorter, she published a volume in his memory. The prize was established under the auspices of the French magazine Femina and affiliated with France's Prix Femina. A French committee chose the winner from a shortlist submitted by the British committee, while the British committee chose the winner of the reciprocal Heinemann Prize from a shortlist of French works submitted by the French committee.

Personal life Whale was the maternal aunt of economist John Hicks, to whom she became a "second mother" and her Cotswolds house "his second home". Whale gifted a large part of her "fabulous general library collection" to her nephew, who — with his wife Ursula Kathleen Hicks — moved into Whales' house in 1946.

Death Winifred Whale died in Blockley on 8 September 1944. For her obituary in The Times, a correspondent wrote:Mrs. George Whale was a devoted friend of France. When, after the last war, the Femina-Vie-Heureuse-Northcliffe Prize Committee (now the Stock-Heinemann Prize Committee) was founded she became its honorary secretary. Half French. half English, the committee had for its purpose the discovery and encouragement of literary talent in the two countries. With her wide knowledge of French literature, and many personal friends in Paris, Winifred Whale was the mainspring of the whole. She helped to bring to the knowledge of French readers the work of such writers as Virginia Woolf and E. M. Forster, to English readers that of Julien Green and Henri de Montherlant, to name a few out of half a hundred prizewinners. Mrs. Whale had been in later years an invalid: but her ever-increasing suffering never diminished her interest in the work of the committee, her alertness of mind, and tranquil good humour.