Gillian Avery

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Gillian (Elise) Avery is a British children’s novelist and literary historian.

She was born in Reigate on September 30, 1926 and attended Dunottar School there.[1]. She worked first as a journalist, on the Surrey Mirror, then for Chambers Encyclopedia and Oxford University Press. In 1952 she married the literary scholar A.O.J. Cockshut, with whom she moved to Manchester, returning to Oxford in 1966.[2]

She is the author of several studies of children’s history and early children’s literature; and this is reflected in her own books for children, which have a Victorian setting. The first, The Warden’s Niece (1957) is a witty adventure story, in which Maria runs away from her stultifying boarding school to live with her great-uncle, the head of an Oxford college. He decides to let her stay, impressed by her academic ambitions (she wants to become Professor of Greek); and she proves her abilities as a researcher by uncovering a piece of history from the civil war. Characters from the book reappear in The Elephant War (1960), which concerns the attempt to prevent the sale of London Zoo’s Jumbo to P.T. Barnum, and The Italian Spring (1962).

[edit] Selected Publications

Children’s Books

  • The Warden’s Niece 1957
  • Trespassers at Charlcote 1958
  • James Without Thomas 1959
  • The Elephant War 1960
  • To Tame a Sister 1961
  • The Greatest Gresham 1962
  • The Peacock House 1963
  • The Italian Spring 1964
  • Call of the Valley 1968
  • A Likely Lad 1971 (winner of the Guardian Award, adapted for television in 1990[3])
  • Ellen's Birthday 1971
  • Ellen and the Queen 1972
  • Huck and her Time Machine 1977
  • Mouldy’s Orphan 1978

Non fiction

  • Mrs Ewing (London: Bodley Head) 1961
  • Childhood’s Pattern, A study of the heroes and heroines of children’s fiction 1770-1950 (London: Hodder and Stoughton) 1975
  • The best type of girl, A history of girls' independent schools (London) 1991

[edit] References

  • Cadogan, Mary, 'Avery, Gillian (Elise)', Twentieth Century Children's Writers, ed. D.L. Kirkpatrick (London: Macmillan, 1978), 57-9.
  • Carpenter, Humphrey and Prichard, Mari, The Oxford Companion to Children’s Literature (Oxford:OUP) 1984, 38-9.
  • Townsend, John Rowe, Written for Children (Harmondsworth: Penguin) ed. 3 1987, 255-6

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ Cadogan, 57.
  2. ^ Cadogan, 57; Carpenter and Prichard, 38-9.
  3. ^ IMDB page[1]