▶Date of birth:   5 October 1823       Place of birth: Clare, Suffolk

▶Father:  Henry Blunt     Mother:  Julia Anne Nailer

▶Spouse(s):  -       Date(s) of marriage:           Place(s) of marriage: 

▶Occupation: Author

▶Lifestory: Julia Sophia Blunt was the daughter of a Vicar who in her thirties wrote two short religious texts while she lived in Cheltenham. She was born in Clare, Suffolk, in 1823, the only daughter of the Revd. Henry Blunt, then Vicar of Clare, and his wife Julia Anne (née Nailer). Julia was brought up in Clare, and the family moved with her father’s new office to Chelsea in 1821. After her father’s death in 1843 she lived with her mother at 2 Wellington Square East (now Park House, Wellington Square), Pittville from at least 1851 until 1861. Her cousin the Revd. Frederick Lefevre Blunt, Curate of St Paul’s Church in Cheltenham, lived in rooms in 20 North Place near Pittville and “spent much of his spare time with his aunt [her mother]” and with Julia Sophia at their house in Wellington Square; “for his cousin he had great affection. She was a most remarkable woman, with a very clear insight into character … She was writing a book on confirmation, in the preparation of which he helped her much” (Blunt). Julia was very popular with her relations, as their accounts of the family demonstrate.

While she was in Pittville she published two religious texts, which went into later editions: Reading for a Bible class on the Morning Prayer (1856; in 1859 extended to Readings on the Morning and Evening Prayer) and Life after confirmation (1861). After leaving Pittville she and her mother moved to London, and lived from at least 1871 until the early 1880s at 2 Onslow Square, Kensington, before moving to 4 Carlyle Square, Chelsea, where her mother died in 1883.

Julia remained at 4 Carlyle Square until her death there, unmarried, in 1895, at the age of seventy-one, after which she joined her mother in the Brompton cemetery. Her estate at death was valued at just over £1,865.

▶Moved to Pittville from:   Chelsea      Moved from Pittville to: Kensington, London

▶Date of death:  4 February 1895         Place of death:  4 Carlyle Square, London

▶Date of burial:  7 February 1895       Place of burial: Brompton cemetery

▶Notes:  A. S. V. Blunt, Frederick L. Blunt Bishop of Hull (London: 1913). See also a brief biography in Reginald Blunt, Memoirs of Gerald Blunt of Chelsea, his family and forebears (1911), pp. 155ff.        ID:  6038

Contributor(s):  Alan Munden/John Simpson