Pamela Wynne

Pamela Wynne is the pseudonym of Winifred Mary Scott, née Watson (1879 – 29 January 1959), a British writer of over 60 romantic novels from 1923 until her death in 1959.

Personal life

She was born with the name Winifred Mary Watson on 1879 in London, England, the fourth child of Lily and Samuel Watson, a solicitor in the City of London, two more children were to follow. The family were affluent enough to have Winifred educated privately in Lausanne, Switzerland and it was during her education that she found her love of writing.

On 14 November 1905, she married William Herbert Schroder Scott in Bombay, India, . She bore three children, William Patrick Temple Scott born 1908, Herbert Wyndham Fitzgerald Scott born 1910, Sholto Haig Scott-Watson born 1917. The marriage divorced in 1932.

She died on 29 January 1959 in Sissinghurst, Kent.

Writing career

As Pamela Wynne wrote more than 60 romantic novels during her lifetime, many of which inspired on her own experiences of living in India. Two of her books were turned into major motion pictures, Dangerous Innocence (1925) with Laura La Plante and Eugene O'Brien and Devotion (1931) with Ann Harding and Leslie Howard.

Ann's An Idiot by Pamela Wynne

Review from May 1923: Mordaunt Hall, New York Times

This is a variant of the plot about the big strong silent man and the little innocent girl whom he could (and did at times) lift like thistledown and carry away. It is an ingenious variant, because the big man, does not in this case really feel much interest in the little girl at first, and she, not he, falls in love at first sight. This happens on board the Carpathia, bound for India where Ann's parents are awaiting her arrival fresh from a convent school. Tony Seymour, the strong hero, has had an earlier, and very innocent, affair of the heart with little Ann's mother, and is naturally averse from expending his emotions again on one of the same family. He is affected, however, by Ann's dog-like devotion, and each one of the appalling dangers and scrapes she falls into—and the rest of the book is chiefly made up of these—seems to bind him to her more closely. He proposes to her because she has been seen by someone sitting by his side at night on deck while he slept, and after that his time is largely occupied in rescuing her with admirable courage and resource from the various people who kidnap her for one purpose or another. When all seems at last to be going smoothly the villain drops words of venom about Tony's old love affair. Ann is too innocent not to believe the worst, and estrangement follows—not for long, however, and the villain soon, sitting at Guggerpore in a temperature of 110deg, swore horribly as he read his English papers. They contained an announcement of the marriage.