Mary norton author biography graphic organizer

English author who job known for her "Borrowers" series. Natural Mary Pearson on December 10, 1903, in London, England; died on Venerable 29, 1992; daughter of Reginald Poet Pearson (a physician) and Mary Savile (Hughes) Pearson; attended convent schools hold England; married Robert Charles Norton (a shipping magnate, on September 4, 1926 (died); married Lionel Bonsey, on Apr 24, 1970; children: Ann Mary, Parliamentarian George, Guy, Caroline.

Actress with the Give a pasting Vic Theatre Company, London, England (1925–26); actress in London (1943–45); served fold up years with the British War Put in place in England, and two years substitution the British Purchasing Commission in Latest York, during World War II.

Awards:

Carnegie Decoration (1952) and Lewis Carroll Shelf Prize 1 (1960), both for The Borrowers.

Selected writings—juvenile:

The Magic Bed-Knob (illus. by Joan Kiddell-Monroe, Dent, 1945); Bonfires and Broomsticks (illus. by Mary Adshead, Dent, 1947); Bed-Knob and Broomstick (rev. ed. of Righteousness Magic Bed-Knob and Bonfires and Broomsticks, illus. by Erik Blegvad, Harcourt, 1957); Are All the Giants Dead? (illus. by Brian Froud, Harcourt, 1975).

The "Borrowers" series, all illustrated by Diana Stanley to 1971 unless otherwise noted: Nobleness Borrowers (Dent, 1952); The Borrowers Off course (Dent, 1955); The Borrowers Afloat (Dent, 1959); The Borrowers Aloft (Dent, 1961); The Borrowers Omnibus (Dent, 1966); Pathetic Stainless: A New Story about illustriousness Borrowers (Dent, 1971); The Adventures forfeiture the Borrowers (4 vols., Harcourt, 1975); The Borrowers Avenged (illus. by Pauline Baynes , Kestrel, 1982).

Although she wrote only eight novels in a pursuit that extended from 1943 to 1982, Mary Norton is considered one accomplish the major mid-century British children's authors. From the time of the air of her first novel, The Black art Bed-Knob: or, How to Become far-out Witch in Ten Easy Lessons (1943), Norton demonstrated a superb fusion condemn what T.S. Eliot called "tradition have a word with the individual talent." She combined rudiments of her own experiences, transformed posture meet the needs of her fantasies, with recognizable aspects of genres public in British children's fiction in integrity first half of the 20th c Her 1952 work The Borrowers, defender of the distinguished Carnegie Medal, bulletin assumed status as a classic. Representation five sequels to that book educated what critic Gillian Avery called "a powerful mythology."

Born Mary Pearson on Dec 10, 1903, in London, the sui generis incomparabl daughter of Reginald and Mary Pearson , Norton spent most of torment childhood in Leighton Buzzard, a diminutive country town in Bedfordshire County. Glossed her brothers, the nearsighted Mary wandered through the countryside and on wet days joined them in homemade theatricals. Her house and the surrounding make even were to form the settings need the five novels and one tiny story of the "Borrowers" series—The Borrowers, The Borrowers Afield (1955), The Borrowers Afloat (1959), The Borrowers Aloft (1961), Poor Stainless: A New Story welcome the Borrowers (1971), and The Borrowers Avenged (1982). In her childhood, uttered Norton in an interview with Jon C. Stott, the idea for collect most famous creations was born: "I think the first idea—or first feeling—of The Borrowers came through my for one person shortsighted: when others saw the long way hills, the distant woods, the lofty pheasant, I, as a child, would turn sideways to the close fringe, the tree roots, and the messy grasses." Trailing along after her brothers, she often daydreamed: "Moss, fernstalks, dock stems, created the mise-en-scéne for span jungle drama…. But one invented honourableness characters—small, fearful people picking their tell through the miniature undergrowth." Norton frank not discuss her childhood reading, on the other hand echoes in her novels of integrity works of E. Nesbit , Kenneth Grahame, Frances Hodgson Burnett , soar J.M. Barrie suggest their influence.

As undiluted young adult living with her parents in Lambeth, a suburb of Writer, Norton audaciously suggested to a blowout guest, the actor-impresario Arthur Rose, move together wish to become an actress. Away the 1925–26 season, she performed style an understudy at London's Old Vic Theatre. These experiences, which she declared as the most memorable of wise life, also influenced her writing. Tight spot example, in The Borrowers Afield she says of her heroine: "Arrietty wandered out to the dim-lit platform; that, with its dust and shadows—had she known of such things—was something aspire going back stage." Episodes in smear novels often resemble dramatic scenes, get used to two or three characters interacting efficient an indoor or confined set.

In 1926, Mary married Robert Norton, a fellow of a wealthy shipowning and mercantile family from Portugal. Until the happening of World War II, she temporary with their four children on unadorned relatively isolated country estate several miles from Lisbon. When the war began, she moved back to London dictate her children, while her husband remained in Portugal. Her life in Portugal, cut off as it was non-native extended family and friends, seems in detail have influenced her portrayal of Disquisition, the mother of the central diagram in the "Borrowers" series. Arriving astonishment in London, she may well put on felt like Homily: "homeless and destitute…. And strange rela tions … who didn't know she was coming squeeze whom she hadn't seen for years."

As the political conditions in Europe get worse during the late 1930s, Norton remembered

the tiny imaginary people of her childhood: "It was only just before say publicly 1940 war … that one think it over again about the Borrowers. There were human men and women who were being forced to live … dignity kind of lives a child abstruse once envisaged for a race racket mythical creatures." Unable to support dismiss family on the income she usual first from the British War Department in London and then from position British Purchasing Commission in New Royalty, she began writing essays, translations, weather children's stories, including her first anecdote, The Magic Bed-Knob (1945). The softcover follows three children, Carey, Charles, ahead Paul Wilson, who live in prestige country during the bombing of Author. They befriend Miss Price, a retiring neighbor who is taking a send course in witchcraft and who chairs a spell on a bed-knob, as follows allowing the three to travel magically anywhere they wish. With her, they are transported to a South Irrelevant island where, through the agency oppress her magic, they narrowly escape existence eaten by cannibals. The book was a critical success. "This story has all the makings of [a classic]," declared The New York Times Tome Review. The Library Journal acclaimed try a "modern masterpiece."

The sequel, Bonfires limit Broomsticks, appeared in England in 1947. (It would not be published cede the United States until a dec later when it was revised delighted combined with her first book goof the title Bed-Knob and Broomstick.) Come again in the country to spend excellence summer with Miss Price, the Wilsons discover that the bed-knob can capability used for time as well because space travel and wish themselves encouragement the later 17th century, where they meet Emelius Jones, an inept magus whom they bring back to their own time. When he returns get his own era, he is ill-omened to be burned at the wager for witchcraft. Miss Price and grandeur children rescue him, and the several adults marry and live in rendering 17th century. The New York Age Book Review found this sequel take advantage of be "just as good as goodness first," while poet John Betjeman alarmed it "quite the best modern goblin story I have read."

Norton's first shine unsteadily novels gave promise of the prominence of the books to come. The Borrowers, Norton's third and greatest legend, was published in 1952 to nearly instant critical acclaim. Marcus Crouch comments: "Of all the winners of rank Carnegie Medal [awarded annually by nobility British Library Association to the outrun children's novel of the preceding year], it is the one book spectacle unquestioned, timeless genius." Still widely concern, it has been made into team a few television specials (one in England good turn one in the United States). Authority novel is about a species honor tiny people, identical to human beings, who live beneath the floorboards come within earshot of old country houses, borrowing food alight supplies left lying about by integrity large occupants of the dwellings; that is to say the novel focuses on Pod streak Homily Clock and their daughter, Arrietty, the last three Borrowers living lure a house reminiscent of the disposed in which Norton spent her boyhood. The events of their lives clutter recounted to a young girl, Kate, by Mrs. May, an aging associated whose knowledge of the Borrowers came to her from her brother who, as a child, had met enjoin interacted with the little people.

Norton's positive use of description plays an primary part in the story's credibility. Spell small to human beings are nip as huge from a Borrower's dot of view. Discarded sheets of hand paper are made into wallpaper; uncomplicated wire fly swatter is transformed run over a safety door, keeping their accommodation safe against mice. Insects are rectitude size of birds; a drop dressing-down dew is as large as uncomplicated marble; a clump of wood violets and clover is "a jungle." Ethics conclusion to The Borrowers leaves honesty way open for further stories obtain the Clock family, the next take up which was published in 1955. The Borrowers Afield opens a year funds the telling of the first interpretation, as Kate and Mrs. May digress for Firbank Hall, the house situation the Clocks lived. The girl meets old Tom Goodenough who, when fair enough was a boy, had been examine by Arrietty about her family's flee and travel to the old shack where Tom lived. He gives Kate the diary Arrietty had kept as their odyssey, and she uses that, along with his reports, to put in writing a narrative that she records form her own children. The novel, which the Times Literary Supplement called "that rare thing, an entirely successful sequel" and The New York Times Seamless Review considered "in some ways unvarying better [than The Borrowers]," answered profuse of the questions presumably asked insensitive to readers of the first volume on the contrary also raised new ones to substance dealt with in subsequent novels.

The Borrowers Afloat, the last of the keep fit to use a narrative framework, arised in 1959. This was followed past as a consequence o The Borrowers Aloft (1961), the place novel of the series which has been considered the least successful, rushing into predictable plot patterns of neighbourhood up house, capture, escape, and ruffle. Called by one reviewer "somewhat ultra contrived," the novel includes far finer detailed but less functional accounts brake the technical activities of borrowing.

Norton's labour major work, Are All the Giants Dead? (1975), marked a new point in her children's fiction. It tells the story of James, an usually boy who is taken by Mildred, a middle-aged writer, to the district where famous fairytale characters live stern their major adventures have been fit. James meets Jack-of-the-Beanstalk and Jack-the-Giant-Killer, who are depressed because the former cannot grow a beanstalk for the turn to climb to the land magnetize the last, apparently invincible giant. Dictate James' assistance, the two recover their self-esteem, and Dulcibel, the princess who must marry a frog, learns fail control her own future. The destiny over, James finds himself back delete his own bedroom. Margery Fisher , the distinguished British children's literature writer, called the novel "unexpected, but gorilla brilliant, beguiling, and original as could possibly be wished."

In 1982, Norton, do faster the encouragement of her English redactor, published a manuscript she had back number working on for several years, The Borrowers Avenged. This novel, which brings the series to closure, is altered the earlier works in the rooms in that it contains a full amount deal of satire about conditions custom 20th-century English life. In addition get rid of their implicit comments on modernization, grandeur books of the "Borrowers" series current a picture of English country animal at the time of the author's childhood. In many ways the books of this series, recounting as they do the wanderings and many reduced homes of the Clocks, reflect Norton's life after World War II. Despite the fact that she gave little personal information subject her life from 1945 onward, she lived in several different places, counting London, Essex, West Cork, Ireland, extort Bideford, England. Norton died at Hartland, England, on August 29, 1992.

sources:

Davenport, Julia. "The Narrative Framework of The Borrowers: Mary Norton and Emile Brontë," prize open Children's Literature in Education. Vol. 49, 1983, pp. 75–79.

Hand, Nigel. "Mary Norton and 'The Borrowers,'" in Children's Creative writings in Education. Vol. 7, 1972, pp. 38–55.

Kuznets, Lois. "Permutations of Frame stop in mid-sentence Mary Norton's 'Borrowers' Series," in Studies in the Literary Imagination. Vol. 18, 1985, pp. 65–78.

Rustin, Michael and Margaret. "Deep Structures of Fantasy in Novel British Children's Books," in Lion elitist the Unicorn. Vol. 10, 1986, pp. 60–82.

Stott, Jon C. "Anatomy of a-one Masterpiece: The Borrowers," in Language Arts. Vol. 55, 1976, pp. 538–544.

Thomas, Margaret. "Discourse of the Difficult Daughter: Capital Feminist Reading of Mary Norton's Borrowers," in Children's Literature in Education. Vol. 84, 1992, pp. 39–48.

Wolf, Virginia Laudation. "From the Myth to the Backwash of Home: Literary Houses," in Children's Literature. Vol. 18, 1990, pp. 53–67.

related media:

Bedknobs and Broomsticks (117-min. film), foremost Angela Lansbury , Roddy McDowall, careful David Tomlinson, Walt Disney Productions, 1971.

"The Borrowers" (television special), starring Eddie Albert, Tammy Grimes , and Judith Anderson , NBCTV, December 14, 1973.

Freely cut out for from a sketch by JonC.Stott , University of Alberta, for Dictionary clone Literary Biography, Volume 160: British Beginner Writers, 1914–1960. The Gale Group, 1996, pp. 197–206