A. M. W. Stirling

Anna Marie Diana Wilhelmina Stirling (née Pickering; 26 August 1865 – 11 August 1965), also known as Wilhelmina Stirling and under the alias Percival Pickering, was a British writer and art collector. A greater part of her books dealt with the lives and reminiscences of the British landed gentry of Yorkshire. She was the founder of the De Morgan Centre for the Study of 19th Century Art and Society. Biography Stirling (then Pickering) was born to Anna Marie Wilhelmina Spencer Stanhope (1824–1901) and the lawyer and cricketer Percival Pickering (1810–1876). Her mother was a granddaughter of Thomas William Coke, 1st Earl of Leicester. Stirling's parents married in 1853. Wilhelmina was the youngest child – she had three older siblings: the painter Evelyn Pickering de Morgan, Percival Spencer Umfreville Pickering (1858–1920) and Rowland Neville Umfreville (1861–1931). The painter John Roddam Spencer Stanhope was her maternal uncle. The Pickering siblings had a special relationship with their nanny which lasted until her death: Jane Hales was portrayed by Evelyn de Morgan as early as 1866, and later lived with Wilhelmina Stirling until her death in 1925, since she had never married herself. Wilhelmina Pickering married Charles Goodbarne Stirling (1866–1948) in 1901 and they moved into Launceston Place. As a wedding present, the couple received a bowl with a leopard and deer motif from Wihelmina's brother-in-law, the ceramic artist and author William De Morgan, which is now on display in the De Morgan Museum. Stirling was a humanist, and a Life Member of the Rationalist Press Association. She was described in The Humanist in 1963 as the RPA's 'oldest supporter'.