Eleanor Farjeon
| Eleanor Farjeon | |
|---|---|
.jpg)
Farjeon in 1899
|
|
| Born | Eleanor Farjeon 13 February 1881 London, England, UK |
| Died | 5 June 1965 (aged 84) Hampstead, London, England |
| Pen name | Tomfool, Merry Andrew, Chimaera |
| Nationality | British |
| Period | 1908–58 |
| Genre | Children's literature |
| Notable works | Morning Has Broken |
| Notable awards |
Carnegie Medal 1955 Hans Christian Andersen Award 1956 |
Eleanor Farjeon (13 February 1881 – 5 June 1965) was an English author of children's stories and plays, poetry, biography, history and satire. Several of her works had illustrations by Edward Ardizzone. Some of her correspondence has also been published. She won many literary awards and the Eleanor Farjeon Award for children's literature is presented annually in her memory by the Children's Book Circle, a society of publishers. She was the sister of the thriller writer Joseph Jefferson Farjeon.
Eleanor Farjeon was born in London, England on 13 February 1881. The daughter of popular novelist Benjamin Farjeon and Maggie (Jefferson) Farjeon, Eleanor came from a literary family, her two younger brothers, Joseph and Herbert Farjeon, being writers, while the oldest, Harry Farjeon, was a composer. Her father was Jewish, and her mother was a gentile.
Eleanor, known to the family as "Nellie", was a small timid child, who had poor eyesight and suffered from ill-health throughout her childhood. She was educated at home, spending much of her time in the attic, surrounded by books. Her father encouraged her writing from the age of five. She describes her family and her childhood in the autobiographical, A Nursery in the Nineties (1935).
She and her brother Harry were especially close. Beginning when Eleanor was five, they began a sustained imaginative game in which they became various characters from theatrical plays and literature. This game, called T.A.R. after the initials of two of the original characters, lasted into their mid-twenties. Eleanor credited this game with giving her "the flow of ease which makes writing a delight".
Although she lived much of her life among the literary and theatrical circles of London, much of Eleanor's inspiration came from her childhood and from family holidays. A holiday in France in 1907 was to inspire her to create a story of a troubadour, later refashioned as the wandering minstrel of her most famous book, Martin Pippin in the Apple Orchard. Among her earliest publications is a volume of poems called Pan Worship, published in 1908, and Nursery Rhymes of London Town from 1916. During World War I, the family moved to Sussex where the landscape, villages and local traditions were to have a profound effect upon her later writing. It was in Sussex that the Martin Pippin stories were eventually to be located.
...
Wikipedia