Bunbury, Selina (1802–82), novelist and short-story and travel writer, was born in 1802 at Kilsaran House, Co. Louth, one of the fifteen children of the Rev. Henry Bunbury, a Church of Ireland clergyman and rector of Mansfieldstown, and Henrietta Shirley, of Loughrea, Co. Galway. The Bunburys were distantly connected to Frances (Fanny) Burney, on whom Selina as a young woman seems to have modelled herself. She lived at Beaulieu, Co. Louth, until 1819, when her father's bankruptcy forced the family to relocate to Dublin. After the move she worked as a primary school teacher and began secretly to write, fearing her mother's disapproval. Her early work was published anonymously in Dublin and was immediately successful. Her first book, A visit to my birthplace (1821), was reprinted twelve times in her lifetime, and was followed by other travel books set in Ireland: Cabin conversations (1827) and Earthly recollections (1829). These established her local reputation and, although they are frequently marred by religious bias (a trait which appeared far less in her later writing), are valued for their depiction of pre-famine life in Ireland.
Around 1830 the Bunburys moved to Liverpool, where Selina kept house for her twin brother while subsidising their income by a prodigious and diverse output of literary work. Tales from my country (1833) and Recollections of Ireland (1839) again took Ireland as their subject, but Bunbury also wrote fiction such as The star of the court: a story of Anne Boleyn (1844) and, her most popular work, Coombe Abbey, a historical tale of the days of James I (1844). In 1842–3 she returned to Ireland, where her mother was dying, and in 1845, after the marriage of her brother, began to travel extensively throughout Europe, recording her experiences in the travel books for which she is best remembered – works such as The Pyrenees (1845), Summer in northern Europe (1856), and Russia after the war (1857). She combined travel writing with novels such as Evelyn (1849), whose narrative concerns a trip from Stockholm to Rome, and continued to publish extremely popular historical novels such as Sir Guy D'Esterre (1858) and Florence Manvers (1865). Bunbury is known to have produced at least one translation, The Sunday of the people of France (1855), from a French tract by Abbé Mullois. Religious themes were often prominent in her writing, particularly in the many works she produced for children, which were often highly didactic in tone, such as The triumph of truth, or Henry and his sister (1847). She wrote numerous pamphlets for the Religious Tract Society and the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, and contributed to various periodicals, including the Dublin University Magazine, Fraser's Magazine, Leisure Hour, and Sunday at Home.
Bunbury never married and died 8 September 1882 at Cheltenham. She was buried in Cheltenham cemetery, where a memorial was erected to commemorate her. Her portrait in miniature, painted by Harriet Bunbury, is in the collection of the NGI; letters concerning an application to the Royal Literary Fund are in the British Library.