Winifred Peck

Who is Winifred Peck?

Winifred Peck was an author of literary fiction and biographies. A member of a remarkable family, her father was Edmund Arbuthnott Knox, the fourth Bishop of Manchester, and her siblings were E. V. Knox, editor of Punch magazine, Ronald Knox, theologian and writer, Dilly Knox, cryptographer, Wilfred Lawrence Knox, clergyman, and Ethel Knox. Peck’s niece was the Booker Prize-winning author Penelope Fitzgerald who wrote a biography of her father, E. V. Knox, and her uncles, entitled The Knox Brothers.

Peck was one of the first 40 pupils to attend Wycombe Abbey School, and she went on to read Modern History at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford.

Peck’s first book was a biography of Louis IX in 1909. Ten years after this, she began her novel-writing career which saw twenty-five books over a period of forty years, including House-bound which was reprinted in 2007 by Persephone Books. Also included among her work are two books on the subject of her own childhood, A Little Learning and Home for the Holidays.

In 1911 she married James Peck, a British civil servant, who was awarded a knighthood in 1938. They had three children.