Eve Garnett

Eve Garnett (9 January 1900 – 5 April 1991) was an English writer and illustrator. She is best known for The Family from One End Street, a 1937 children's novel that features a large, small-town, working-class family.

Garnett was born in Worcestershire and educated at two schools in Devon and at the Alice Ottley School in Worcester. She then went to the Chelsea Polytechnic School of Art and the Royal Academy Schools, and eventually exhibited at the Tate Gallery, the LeFevre Gallery and the New English Art Club.

Garnett was commissioned to illustrate Evelyn Sharp's 1927 book The London Child and the work left her "appalled by conditions prevailing in the poorer quarters of the world's richest city". She determined to show up some of the evils of poverty and extreme class division in the United Kingdom, especially in contemporary London. To that end she worked on a 40-foot mural at the Children's House in Bow, completed a book of drawings with commentary called Is It Well With The Child? (1938), and both wrote and illustrated a story book that dealt with the social conditions of the English working class, which was exceptional in children's literature.

That book, The Family from One End Street, was rejected by several publishers who deemed it "not suitable for the young", but eventually published by Frederick Muller in 1937. It won the second annual Carnegie Medal from the Library Association, recognising the year's outstanding children's book by a British subject. (It beat Tolkien's The Hobbit among others.) For the 70th anniversary of the Medal, it was named one of the top ten Medal-winning works, selected by a panel to compose the ballot for a public election of the all-time favourite. It is regarded as a classic, having remained in print to the present day.

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