Selina Bunbury

Selina Bunbury (1802–1882) was an Anglo-Irish novelist and traveler.

Early life

Selina Bunbury was born at Kilsaran Rectory near Castlebellingham, County Louth. She was a twin, and one of fifteen children of a Protestant minister, Rev. Henry Bunbury. The Bunbury family moved to Dublin in 1819, and to Liverpool about 1830.

Career

Bunbury was a prolific author, writing nearly a hundred volumes of both fiction and non-fiction, for young readers and a general audience, beginning with Visit to my Birthplace (1821). Her writing had "a strong proselytizing and moral component". "Miss Bunbury is an experienced, an observant, and a discriminating traveller," commented an 1853 reviewer, "with but one fault we can discover — a violent Tractarian tinge, which, however, does not render her book less amusing."

Bunberry traveled from Stockholm to Rome in 1847 and 1848, becoming a first-hand witness to revolution and upheaval in several parts of Europe. Her travel writing included My Early Adventures During the Peninsular Campaign of Napoleon (1834), Evenings in the Pyrenees (1845), A visit to the catacombs, or first Christian cemeteries of Rome, and a midnight visit to mount Vesuvius (1849), Evelyn, or, A journey from Stockholm to Rome in 1847-48 (1849), Life in Sweden (1853), A Summer in Northern Europe (1856), Russia After the War (1857) and My First Travels (1859).

Some of her books continued to be published long after her death in 1882, including American editions of Fanny, the flower girl, or Honesty rewarded (1911).