Julia Goddard
Julia Bachope Goddard (11 July 1825 – 30 September 1896), was a British children's writer of more than 25 books, animal welfare campaigner, and journalist. Early life. She was born in Birmingham on 11 July 1825, the eldest daughter in a family of at least eight children of Samuel Aspinwall Goddard (1796–1886) and his wife, Jemima Goddard, née Bachope (1800–1875). Samuel Aspinwall Goddard came from Brookline, Massachusetts (a town near Boston), in the United States, but moved to Birmingham, where he was a gun manufacturer and iron merchant, and wrote pamphlets on free trade and currency reform. He  was the United States' consul in Birmingham, and later became a naturalized British subject. Career. In 1863 Goddard published her first children's book, "Karl and the Six Little Dwarfs", and at least a further twenty-five were published over the rest of her career. Many of her books concentrated on animal welfare, itself mirroring her long-term commitment to helping animals receive more humane treatment, more "moderate humanitarianism", than the "more radical elements in the animal rights' movements or anti-vivisection". According to a contemporary account in the "Animals' Friend", Goddard was "one of the hardest and yet most  unpretentious workers the movement has yet possessed". Personal life. She never married. Later life. Goddard suffered from extremely poor health from 1894 onwards after a severe case of influenza, and together with her failing eyesight, she had to stop writing. She was unmarried and lived with her sister, Fanny Goddard, in a cottage in Little Aston, near Sutton Coldfield, Warwickshire. She died at her cottage as a result of a cerebral haemorrhage on 30 September 1896.