Johanna Spyri While living in the city of Zurich Johanna Spyri began to write about life in the Swiss countryside. It was in this period that she penned her most famous work, Heidi. Susan Coolidge Woolsey was born in Cleveland, Ohio. She worked as a nurse during the American Civil War after which she started to write. The fictional Carr family in What Katy Did was modelled after the author's own. Anna Sewell Anna Mary Sewell was born in Norfolk. Her only published work was Black Beauty, written by dictating the text to her mother and then by writing on slips of paper. She originally wrote the story for those who worked with horses.