Catherine Storr
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Catherine Storr, born Catherine Cole (21 July 1913, London – 6 January 2001, London), was an English novelist best known for her novel Marianne Dreams and for the series of books about a wolf ineptly pursuing a young girl, beginning with Clever Polly and the Stupid Wolf.
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[edit] Life
She was born in London and attended St Paul's Girls' School, where she was taught music by Gustav Holst and became the school's organist.[1] She studied English literature at Newnham College, Cambridge; and at first pursued a career as a novelist without success. Without giving up this ambition she studied medicine, qualifying as a doctor in 1944. From 1950 to 1963 she worked as a Senior Medical Officer in the Department of Psychological Medicine at the Middlesex Hospital.[2]
She had met the psychiatrist and author Anthony Storr during her training and married him in 1942. She had three daughters by this marriage, Sophia, Polly and Emma. They divorced in 1970 and she subsequently married the economist Lord Balogh (1905-1985).[3]
Unusually among the leading writers of her time, much of her work was for younger children, at the start of their reading, notably the series of stories about Polly and the wolf, which originated in stories for her daughter, Polly. The stories, starting with the collection Clever Polly and the Stupid Wolf (1955) feature a wolf trying to catch a little girl Polly: the wolf, himself a fairy tale figure, takes his always impractical subterfuges from fairy tales, but is always outmatched by Polly. A novel for slightly older children Marianne Dreams (1958) is more disturbing: a young girl, being tutored at home during sickness, travels in dreams to the house she has drawn while awake and meets their another pupil of her tutor; in a moment of jealousy she draws stones with eyes around the house to keep him prisoner and must then undo her actions. It was made into the TV series Escape Into Night and the film Paperhouse; Storr was not fond of the latter, and particularly disliked the ending.[4]
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[edit] References
- J. Eccleshare, "Catherine Storr", The Guardian, 11 January, 2001 (obituary).
- A. Thwaite, "Catherine Storr", The Independent, 12 January 2001 (obituary).
[edit] External links
- Catherine Storr Bibliography
- Catherine Storr Biography
- Catherine Storr BBC7 article
