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Archives: Book Authors
Sewell Anna
Anna Sewell (1820 – 1878) had just one book published. Written while in ill health, she sold it to a local publisher for £40. Published five months before her death, ‘Black Beauty’ is the most popular animal story ever written, and the sixth best seller in the English language.
Saint-Exupery Antoine de
Antoine de Saint-Exupery (1900 – 1944) was a French aviator and writer who has achieved literary immortality through his story, ‘The Little Prince’, a story for children that has a great appeal for readers of all ages.
Rackham Arthur
Arthur Rackham (1867 – 1939) was an English illustrator responsible for the pictures in a huge number of classic children’s titles, many of which feature in the Wordsworth list. ‘Mother Goose’ was a collection of traditional nursery rhymes which he edited and illustrated.
Steel Flora Annie
Flora Annie Steel (1847- 1929) was an English writer who spent most of her adult life living in, and writing about, India. In later life she moved to Scotland, where her interest in folk tales led her to publish ‘English Fairy Tales’, in conjunction with the famous illustrator, Arthur Rackham.
Porter Eleanor H.
Eleanor H(odgman) Porter (1868 – 1920) was an American novelist and short-story writer whose children’s story ‘Pollyanna’ became the Harry Potter of its day. Pollyanna’s irrepressible optimism is illustrated by the ‘glad game’, in which she would find the positive in any situation. ‘Glad Clubs’ were formed, and the book was adapted for the theatre, cinema and television.
Nesbit E.
The greatest wish of Edith Nesbit (1858 – 1924) was to be remembered as a poet, but her poetry, like much of her adult fiction, is long forgotten. She came to write children’s stories in later life, and was a responsible for a string of enduring titles, the most notable being ‘The Railway Children’. She has been described as ‘the first modern writer for children’, although Wordsworth readers have also been introduced to her talents as a writer of supernatural fiction.
Montgomery Lucy
Few writers can claim to have had a first novel more succesful than the Canadian writer L(ucy) M(aud) Montgomery (1874 – 1942) with ‘Anne of Green Gables’. It sold over one million copies during her lifetime, and has been in print ever since, together with the various sequels that she wrote.
Marryat Captain Frederick
Captian Frederick Marryat (1792 – 1848) spent most of his working life at sea, and used his experiences for the basis of much of his writing. His works are now largely forgotten, with the exception of his popular children’s book, ‘The Children of the New Forest’.
Lear Edward
The gravestone of Edward Lear (1812 – 1888) in an Italian cemetery reads simply ‘Landscape Painter In Many Lands’, and this echoed Lear’s own view of his principal achievement. Posterity remembers him for inspired lunacy of his nonsense poetry, collected in ‘A Book of Nonsense’.