Winifred Eveleen GérinOBE, née Bourne, (7 October 1901 – 28 June 1981) was an English biographer born inHamburg. She is best known as a biographer of theBrontë sisters and their brotherBranwell, whose lives she researched extensively.Charlotte Brontë: the Evolution of Genius (1967) is regarded as her seminal work and received theJames Tait Black Memorial Prize, theRose Mary Crawshay Prize and the Royal Society of Literature Heinemann prize.
Winifred was the daughter of Frederick Charles Bourne (1859–1928)[1] and Katherine née Hill (1859-1943), a great-granddaughter of Sir Hugh Hill, 1stBaronet Hill of Brook Hall. Her parents met when her father was a manager for the chemical companyNobel Industries in Hamburg and her mother was working there as a governess. They married in Hamburg and Winifred and her two elder brothers, Charles Philip Bourne (1897–?) and Roger Hereward Bourne (1898–1979) were all born there. Her first husband, Eugène Jules Telesphore Gérin (1896–1945) was a Belgian cellist whom she first heard playing at a concert in Cannes. Winifred spoke fluent French and German and, during the Second World War she worked for the political intelligence department of the British Foreign Office. Eugène died in 1945 and, later Winifred met John Lock. They married in 1955 and lived together at Haworth, he was the co-author, with Canon W T Dixon, of "A Man of Sorrow: The Life, Letters, and Times of the Rev. Patrick Brontë".[2]
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| Preceded by | Rose Mary Crawshay Prize 1967 | Succeeded by |
