Julia Cecilia Stretton

{{Short description|British novelist}}

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Julia Cecilia Stretton (25 November 1812 – 17 July 1878) was an English novelist.

Julia Cecilia Collinson was born on 25 November 1812, the second daughter of ten daughters and five sons of the Reverend John Collinson, rector of Gateshead. Her siblings included Admiral Richard Collinson and Major General Thomas Bernard Collinson.{{Cite book |last=Boase |first=Frederic |url=https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/001598807 |title=Modern English biography: containing many thousand concise memoirs of persons who have died since the year 1850. With an index of the most interesting matter. |date=1892–1921 |publisher=Netherton and Worth |volume=6 |location=Truro |pages=640–41}}{{Cite book |url=https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/006281690 |title=Women novelists of Queen Victoria's reign; a book of appreciations |date=1897 |publisher=Hurst & Blackett, limited |location=London |pages=204–10}}

In 1831, she married Walter Wilkins, MP for Radnorshire from 1835 to 1840. In 1839, they changed their names to Walter and Julia de Winton. They had two sons and a daughter before he died in 1840. In 1857, she married William Richard Stretton, who died in 1868.

Her first publication was a children's book called The Lonely Island In 1852. She went on to publish a number of novels, including Margaret and Her Bridesmaids (1856) and The Valley of a Hundred Fires (1860). She also contributed two stories to Somebody's Luggage (1862), a Christmas issue of Charles Dickens' periodical All the Year Round.{{Cite book |last=Thomas |first=Deborah A. |url=http://archive.org/details/dickensshortstor0000thom |title=Dickens and the short story |date=1982 |publisher=Philadelphia : University of Pennsylvania Press |others=Internet Archive |isbn=978-0-8122-7828-6 |pages=149}}

Julia Cecilia Stretton died on 17 July 1878.