Frances Mary Peard (16 May 1835 – 5 October 1923) was an English author and traveller who wrote over 40 works of fiction for children or adults between 1867 and 1909.
[1] Born in Exminster in Devon, the daughter of Commander George Shuldham Peard (1793–1837), a naval officer who went to the Arctic regions in search of Sir John Franklin, and Frances Cooke (née Ellicombe, 1805–1895), she was one of five siblings, of whom two died young.
Her older brother George Shuldham Peard (1829–1918) was a veteran of the Crimean War and likewise an author.
With so many distinguished soldiers and sailors in her family it is not surprising that military themes and battles frequently appear in her stories.
She also wrote for the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge (SPCK) and was a friend of Christabel Rose Coleridge, Charlotte Mary Yonge and Edward Bulwer-Lytton,[2] and in later life in Torquay of fellow novelist Anna Harriett Drury.