Elizabeth Gaskell

Winifred Eveleen Gérin OBE (née Bourne; 1901–1981) was an English biographer best known for her extensively researched works on the Brontë family, including Anne Brontë (1959), Branwell Brontë (1961), Charlotte Brontë: The Evolution of Genius (1967)—her seminal award-winning book—and Emily Brontë: A Biography (1971), as well as biographies of Elizabeth Gaskell and others. Born in Hamburg to British parents, she graduated from Newnham College, Cambridge, worked in British Foreign Office intelligence during World War II, and settled in Haworth with her second husband, Brontë scholar John Lock. Her career highlights include multiple literary prizes in 1967 and an OBE in 1975.