Amélie Claire Leroy

Amélie Claire Leroy (1851 – 12 March 1934) was a French writer, who wrote more than 60 works in English often using the pseudonym Esmé Stuart.

Life
Leroy was born in Paris. She lived for a while in Winchester with the novelist Anna Rachel Bramston (Witham 1848/9–1931) and they adopted a daughter called Juliette Charlotte Leroy, identified as Leroy's niece. Bramston, the daughter of John Bramston, founded Winchester High School, a boarding school for girls, in 1884; the school is now called St Swithun's School.

In 1903, Leroy wrote a letter to the Secretary of The Rhodes Trust asking to admit women to the Rhodes Scholarship. Her request was refused.

Literature
Leroy wrote seven dozen novels, many of them aimed at young women, in the late Victorian and Edwardian eras. One of her best known series, the Harum Scarum novels, features the wild Australian schoolgirl Antonia "Toney" Whitburn, forced to live with her aristocratic aunt and uncle in England.