Catherine Sinclair

Catherine Sinclair (17 April 1800 – 6 August 1864) was a Scottish novelist and children's writer, who departed from the moralising approach common in that period.

[8] On children's literature, Sinclair remarks in a preface, "But above all we never forget those who good humouredly complied with the constantly recurring petition of all young people in every generation, and in every house, — 'Will you tell us a story?

She was instrumental in securing seats for crowded thoroughfares, and she set the example in Edinburgh of instituting drinking fountains, one of which bore her name and stood at the city's West End before it was removed as an obstruction to trams in 1926.

Sinclair is also noted as being the discoverer of Sir Walter Scott's authorship of "The Waverley Novels" which were originally written anonymously.

It was erected to her memory on the southeast corner of St Colme Street in Edinburgh's New Town (just north of Charlotte Square), close to her childhood home.

Undated and early works of Miss Sinclair's are Charlie Seymour; Lives of the Cæsars, or the Juvenile Plutarch; Holiday House: A Book for the Young (written in 1839 and once very popular with children); Modern Superstition; and Memoirs of the English Bible,[4] Her other principal works are[12] "Sinclair, Catherine" .