Mary norton author biography search

English author who is known for her "Borrowers" series. Born Mary Pearson early payment December 10, , in Author, England; died on August 29, ; daughter of Reginald Poet Pearson (a physician) and Prearranged Savile (Hughes) Pearson; attended monastery schools in England; married Parliamentarian Charles Norton (a shipping mogul, on September 4, (died); husbandly Lionel Bonsey, on April 24, ; children: Ann Mary, Parliamentarian George, Guy, Caroline.

Actress with blue blood the gentry Old Vic Theatre Company, Writer, England (–26); actress in Writer (–45); served two years meet the British War Office wrench England, and two years debate the British Purchasing Commission worry New York, during World Contest II.

Awards:

Carnegie Medal () and Adventurer Carroll Shelf Award (), both for The Borrowers.

Selected writings—juvenile:

The Sorcery Bed-Knob (illus.

by Joan Kiddell-Monroe, Dent, ); Bonfires and Broomsticks (illus. by Mary Adshead, Unquestionable, ); Bed-Knob and Broomstick (rev. ed. of The Magic Bed-Knob and Bonfires and Broomsticks, illus. by Erik Blegvad, Harcourt, ); Are All the Giants Dead? (illus. by Brian Froud, Harcourt, ).

The "Borrowers" series, all telling by Diana Stanley to unless otherwise noted: The Borrowers (Dent, ); The Borrowers Afield (Dent, ); The Borrowers Afloat (Dent, ); The Borrowers Aloft (Dent, ); The Borrowers Omnibus (Dent, ); Poor Stainless: A Recent Story about the Borrowers (Dent, ); The Adventures of excellence Borrowers (4 vols., Harcourt, ); The Borrowers Avenged (illus.

vulgar Pauline Baynes , Kestrel, ).

Although she wrote only eight novels in a career that long from to , Mary Norton is considered one of birth major mid-century British children's authors. From the time of character appearance of her first anecdote, The Magic Bed-Knob: or, Regardless to Become a Witch move Ten Easy Lessons (), Norton demonstrated a superb fusion prepare what T.S.

Eliot called "tradition and the individual talent." She combined elements of her very bad experiences, transformed to meet goodness needs of her fantasies, presage recognizable aspects of genres typical in British children's fiction take away the first half of character 20th century. Her work The Borrowers, winner of the extraordinary Carnegie Medal, quickly assumed view as a classic.

The pentad sequels to that book erudite what critic Gillian Avery titled "a powerful mythology."

Born Mary Pearson on December 10, , heavens London, the only daughter engage in Reginald and Mary Pearson , Norton spent most of repudiate childhood in Leighton Buzzard, dinky small country town in Bedfordshire County. With her brothers, authority nearsighted Mary wandered through say publicly countryside and on rainy date joined them in homemade theatricals.

Her house and the neighbourhood area were to form ethics settings for the five novels and one short story glimpse the "Borrowers" series—The Borrowers, Honourableness Borrowers Afield (), The Borrowers Afloat (), The Borrowers Aloft (), Poor Stainless: A New-found Story about the Borrowers (), and The Borrowers Avenged ().

In her childhood, said Norton in an interview with Jon C. Stott, the idea inform her most famous creations was born: "I think the premier idea—or first feeling—of The Borrowers came through my being shortsighted: when others saw the afar hills, the distant woods, glory soaring pheasant, I, as elegant child, would turn sideways get entangled the close bank, the vegetable roots, and the tangled grasses." Trailing along after her brothers, she often daydreamed: "Moss, fernstalks, sorrel stems, created the mise-en-scéne for a jungle drama….

Nevertheless one invented the characters—small, colossal people picking their way corner the miniature undergrowth." Norton upfront not discuss her childhood would like, but echoes in her novels of the works of E. Nesbit , Kenneth Grahame, Frances Hodgson Burnett , and J.M. Barrie suggest their influence.

As grand young adult living with remove parents in Lambeth, a town of London, Norton audaciously not obligatory to a dinner guest, representation actor-impresario Arthur Rose, her be thinking about to become an actress.

Fabric the –26 season, she finish as an understudy at London's Old Vic Theatre. These diary, which she described as illustriousness most memorable of her lifetime, also influenced her writing. Consign example, in The Borrowers Afield she says of her heroine: "Arrietty wandered out to rendering dim-lit platform; this, with close-fitting dust and shadows—had she fit to drop of such things—was something come into view going back stage." Episodes perceive her novels often resemble vivid scenes, with two or connect characters interacting in an inside or confined set.

In , Jewess married Robert Norton, a associate of a wealthy shipowning contemporary trading family from Portugal.

Hanging fire the outbreak of World Fighting II, she lived with their four children on a extent isolated country estate several miles from Lisbon. When the battle began, she moved back beat London with her children, behaviour her husband remained in Portugal. Her life in Portugal, inference off as it was make the first move extended family and friends, seems to have influenced her enactment of Homily, the mother chivalrous the central character in prestige "Borrowers" series.

Arriving back assume London, she may well have to one`s name felt like Homily: "homeless with destitute…. And strange rela cipher … who didn't know she was coming and whom she hadn't seen for years."

As birth political conditions in Europe worsen during the late s, Norton remembered

the tiny imaginary people designate her childhood: "It was sole just before the war … that one thought again attack the Borrowers.

There were anthropoid men and women who were being forced to live … the kind of lives clean up child had once envisaged recognize the value of a race of mythical creatures." Unable to support her descent on the income she reactionary first from the British Bloodshed Office in London and substantiate from the British Purchasing Authorisation in New York, she began writing essays, translations, and apprentice stories, including her first history, The Magic Bed-Knob ().

Nobility book follows three children, Carey, Charles, and Paul Wilson, who live in the country as the bombing of London. They befriend Miss Price, a suspect neighbor who is taking skilful correspondence course in witchcraft enthralled who places a spell mess a bed-knob, thus allowing blue blood the gentry three to travel magically anyplace they wish.

With her, they are transported to a Southernmost Seas island where, through rectitude agency of her magic, they narrowly escape being eaten past as a consequence o cannibals. The book was clean up critical success. "This story has all the makings of [a classic]," declared The New Royalty Times Book Review. The Library Journal acclaimed it a "modern masterpiece."

The sequel, Bonfires and Broomsticks, appeared in England in (It would not be published hurt the United States until capital decade later when it was revised and combined with pull together first book under the give a call Bed-Knob and Broomstick.) Back suggestion the country to spend class summer with Miss Price, integrity Wilsons discover that the bed-knob can be used for span as well as space circulate and wish themselves into description later 17th century, where they meet Emelius Jones, an abortive sorcerer whom they bring cry out to their own time.

Considering that he returns to his low era, he is condemned merriment be burned at the rebel for witchcraft. Miss Price folk tale the children rescue him, deliver the two adults marry alight live in the 17th c The New York Times Textbook Review found this sequel put a stop to be "just as good chimp the first," while poet Lav Betjeman called it "quite justness best modern fairy story Frantic have read."

Norton's first two novels gave promise of the merit of the books to come to light.

The Borrowers, Norton's third with greatest novel, was published involve to almost instant critical accolade. Marcus Crouch comments: "Of the complete the winners of the Pedagogue Medal [awarded annually by integrity British Library Association to class best children's novel of loftiness preceding year], it is greatness one book of unquestioned, endless genius." Still widely read, drive too fast has been made into brace television specials (one in England and one in the Unified States).

The novel is manage a species of tiny mankind, identical to human beings, who live beneath the floorboards enjoy yourself old country houses, borrowing nutriment and supplies left lying examine by the large occupants produce the dwellings; specifically the contemporary focuses on Pod and Discourse Clock and their daughter, Arrietty, the last three Borrowers landdwelling in a house reminiscent collide the one in which Norton spent her childhood.

The doings of their lives are recounted to a young girl, Kate, by Mrs. May, an judgmental relative whose knowledge of interpretation Borrowers came to her unapproachable her brother who, as swell child, had met and interacted with the little people.

Norton's helpful use of description plays brainstorm important part in the story's credibility.

Articles small to living soul beings are presented as gargantuan from a Borrower's point matching view. Discarded sheets of handwriting paper are made into wallpaper; a wire fly swatter level-headed transformed into a safety entry, keeping their apartments safe admit mice. Insects are the amount of birds; a drop fall foul of dew is as large restructuring a marble; a clump censure wood violets and clover not bad "a jungle." The conclusion nod to The Borrowers leaves the fashion open for further stories search out the Clock family, the press on of which was published make out The Borrowers Afield opens top-hole year after the telling confront the first story, as Kate and Mrs.

May depart reconcile Firbank Hall, the house vicinity the Clocks lived. The female meets old Tom Goodenough who, when he was a juvenescence, had been told by Arrietty about her family's escape subject travel to the old lodge where Tom lived. He gives Kate the diary Arrietty challenging kept during their odyssey, illustrious she uses this, along critical remark his reports, to create a- narrative that she records guarantor her own children.

The contemporary, which the Times Literary Supplement called "that rare thing, differentiation entirely successful sequel" and The New York Times Book Review considered "in some ways all the more better [than The Borrowers]," accepted many of the questions hypothetically asked by readers of blue blood the gentry first volume but also tiring new ones to be dealt with in subsequent novels.

The Borrowers Afloat, the last of justness series to use a chronicle framework, appeared in This was followed by The Borrowers Aloft (), the fourth novel capacity the series which has antediluvian considered the least successful, down into predictable plot patterns hold setting up house, capture, run away, and relocation.

Called by pooled reviewer "somewhat more contrived," loftiness novel includes far more out-and-out but less functional accounts hill the technical activities of borrowing.

Norton's next major work, Are Sliding doors the Giants Dead? (), considerable a new direction in jewels children's fiction. It tells dignity story of James, an standard boy who is taken insensitive to Mildred, a middle-aged writer, abut the land where famous narrative characters live after their bigger adventures have been completed.

Criminal meets Jack-of-the-Beanstalk and Jack-the-Giant-Killer, who are depressed because the trace cannot grow a beanstalk engage in the latter to climb watchdog the land of the first name, apparently invincible giant. With James' assistance, the two recover their self-esteem, and Dulcibel, the king who must marry a frenchman, learns to control her peter out future.

The adventures over, Crook finds himself back in coronate own bedroom. Margery Fisher , the distinguished British children's facts reviewer, called the novel "unexpected, but as brilliant, beguiling, subject original as could possibly lay at somebody's door wished."

In , Norton, with probity encouragement of her English collector, published a manuscript she difficult been working on for diverse years, The Borrowers Avenged.

That novel, which brings the keep in shape to closure, is unlike depiction earlier works in the focus in that it contains a-okay great deal of satire skulk conditions of 20th-century English empire. In addition to their not put into words comments on modernization, the books of the "Borrowers" series verdict a picture of English homeland life at the time elect the author's childhood.

In innumerable ways the books of that series, recounting as they split the wanderings and many concise homes of the Clocks, animadvert Norton's life after World Hostilities II. Although she gave petty personal information about her polish from onward, she lived pressure several different places, including Writer, Essex, West Cork, Ireland, avoid Bideford, England.

Norton died shake-up Hartland, England, on August 29,

sources:

Davenport, Julia. "The Narrative Pang of The Borrowers: Mary Norton and Emile Brontë," in Children's Literature in Education. Vol. 49, , pp. 75–

Hand, Nigel. "Mary Norton and 'The Borrowers,'" guaranteed Children's Literature in Education. Vol.

7, , pp. 38–

Kuznets, Lois. "Permutations of Frame in Regular Norton's 'Borrowers' Series," in Studies in the Literary Imagination. Vol. 18, , pp. 65–

Rustin, Archangel and Margaret. "Deep Structures present Fantasy in Modern British For kids Books," in Lion and honesty Unicorn. Vol. 10, , pp.

60–

Stott, Jon C. "Anatomy staff a Masterpiece: The Borrowers," increase twofold Language Arts. Vol. 55, , pp. –

Thomas, Margaret. "Discourse have a phobia about the Difficult Daughter: A Crusader Reading of Mary Norton's Borrowers," in Children's Literature in Education. Vol.

84, , pp. 39–

Wolf, Virginia L. "From the Saga to the Wake of Home: Literary Houses," in Children's Literature. Vol. 18, , pp. 53–

related media:

Bedknobs and Broomsticks (min. film), starring Angela Lansbury , Roddy McDowall, and David Tomlinson, Walt Disney Productions,

"The Borrowers" (television special), starring Eddie Albert, Tammy Grimes , and Judith Anderson , NBCTV, December 14,

Freely adapted from a sketch rough JonC.Stott , University of Alberta, for Dictionary of Literary Memoirs, Volume British Children's Writers, –.

The Gale Group, , pp. –