Winifred Stephens Whale

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. She was educated in France and at Tudor Hall School.

In 1923 she married solicitor, freethinker, and chairman of the Rationalist Press Association George Whale, who died suddenly in 1925. The following year, with Edward Clodd and Clement Shorter, she published a volume in his memory. During their marriage, the couple hosted a literary salon, which included guests such as, H. G. Wells, James George Frazer, and the political scientist Graham Wallas.

Whale wrote a number of books on French history and literature, as well as translations from the French by writers such as Anatole France. Her works included The France I Know (1918) and Women of the French Revolution (1922). She also wrote on the life of Marguerite de Valois. Whale acted as honorary secretary for The Femina Vie Heureuse Prize (Prix Femina), awarded under the auspices of the Femina newspaper. This annual prize was awarded for "the best work of imagination produced within a given time by one of the younger British authors or by one who is considered not to have received adequate recognition".

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" library to her nephew, who - with his wife Ursula Kathleen Hicks - moved into Whales' house in 1946.

Death and legacy
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."