Ewing, JULIANA HORATIA ORR

Ewing, JULIANA HORATIA ORR, writer for children, was the daughter of the Rev. Alfred Scott Gatty and his wife, Margaret Gatty (1809-73), the author of Parables from Nature, &c. Born at Ecclesfield, Yorkshire, in 1841, she early began to compose nursery plays for her brothers and sisters, which were performed with her brother, Alfred Scott Gatty, as musical conductor. But she also became proficient in her youth in the modern languages and classical literature. Her nursery stories are said to have suggested to her mother the starting of Aunt Judy's Magazine (1866), to which Mrs Ewing became a contributor. After Mrs Gatty's death, she edited the magazine with her sister for a time, and published in it many of her charming stories. These include Mrs Overtheway's Remembrances, Jackanapes, Jan of the Windmill, A Flat Iron for a Farthing, We and the World, Lob-lie-by-the-Fire, Six to Sixteen, A Great Emergency, Old-fashioned Fairy Tales, and The Story of a Short Life. Mrs Ewing was a graceful writer, and her studies of children, with the varying lights and shadows of child-life, were simple and natural. In 1867 she had married Major Alexander Ewing, the author of a number of translations from the Turkish and the German. She died at Bath, 13th May 1885. See Juliana Ewing and her Books, by Horatia Gatty (1885).