Winifred Norling was a pseudonym for Winifred Mary Jakobsson, a prolific English children's author, known primarily for her girls' school stories.

Born in 1905 in Southampton, she was the daughter of Mathias Jakobsson, a Swedish merchant seaman who married an Englishwoman, Alice Jeans, and settled in his wife's country.

Winifred was educated at Winchester County High School, leaving in 1923 to assist her parents in running their temperance hotel near the docks.

Befriended as a young woman by the Baroness Marie Anna Sophie Margrete von Seydewitz, Jakobsson lived with von Seydewitz for a time in Germany, before the two women returned to England in 1930, settling in Kemptown, Brighton.

She died in 1979, having written a great many children's books, which were extremely popular in their time.