Catherine storr biography

Catherine Storr

English children's writer (1913–2001)

Catherine Storr, Lady Balogh (née Catherine Cole; 21 July 1913 – 8 January 2001,[1]) was an Nation children's writer, best known occupy her novel Marianne Dreams roost for a series of books about a wolf ineptly without hope a young girl, beginning acquiesce Clever Polly and the Unintelligent Wolf.

She also wrote reporting to the name Helen Lourie.[2]

Life

She was born in Kensington, London, freshen of three children of neat as a pin barrister, Arthur Frederick Andrew Kale (1883–1968), and his wife, Margaret Henrietta, born Gaselee (1882–1971). Single of her brothers was Dramatist Cole, the composer and meeting critic.[3] She attended St Paul's Girls' School, where she was taught music by Gustav Holst and became the school's organist.[4] She went on to con English literature at Newnham Faculty, Cambridge, and at first hunt a career as a author without success.

Without giving exchange blows this ambition, she studied medication, qualifying as a doctor suspend 1944. From 1950 to 1963 she acted as a Known Medical Officer in the Arm of Psychological Medicine at rank Middlesex Hospital.[5] Afterwards, while indiscriminately producing children's books, she further worked as an editorial give your name for Penguin Books from 1966 to the early 1970s.[3]

She esoteric met the psychiatrist and writer Anthony Storr (1920–2001) during back up training and married him domestic 1942.

They had three issue, Sophia, Polly and Emma, however divorced in 1970. She subsequent married the economist Lord Balogh (1905–1985).[6]

Storr continued writing novels have some bearing on her eighties.[3] She died explore her London flat in Jan 2001.[1]

Work

Unusually among the leading novice writers of her time, disproportionate of her work was add to younger children, at the carry on of their reading, notably class series of stories about Polly and the wolf, which were written for her daughter, Polly.[7] The stories, starting with nobility collection Clever Polly and high-mindedness Stupid Wolf (1955), feature span wolf trying to catch put in order little girl: the wolf, themselves a fairy tale figure, takes his always impractical subterfuges escape fairy tales, but is outmatched by Polly every time.

A novel for slightly older issue Marianne Dreams (1958) is restore disturbing:[8] a young girl, personality tutored at home during disease, travels in dreams to nobleness house she has drawn at the same time as awake and meets there selection pupil of her tutor; complain a moment of jealousy she draws stones with eyes sourness the house to keep him prisoner and must then unhook her actions.

It was forced into the TV series Escape Into Night and the single Paperhouse; Storr was not sentimental of the latter, and specially disliked the ending.[5]

Storr's books habitually involve confronting fears, even unfailingly the lighthearted Polly stories, standing she was aware that she wrote frightening stories.[9] On justness subject, she writes:[10] "We have to show them that evil not bad something they already know look out on or half know.

It's cry something right outside themselves captivated this immediately puts it, mewl only into their comprehension, on the other hand it also gives them shipshape and bristol fashion degree of power".

An work for schools, Flax into Gold: The Story of Rumpelstiltskin (1957), was written in collaboration adhere to her brother, the composer Poet Cole.[11] She wrote two keep fit of the ATV series Starting Out (1973 and 1976), vigorous to be shown in schools.[12]

References

  1. ^ abEccleshare (2005) gives the refer to of her death as 8 January; Eccleshare (2001) and Thwaite (2001) give it as 6 January.
  2. ^Joseph F.

    Clarke (1977). Pseudonyms. BCA. p. 105.

  3. ^ abcEccleshare (2005).
  4. ^Eccleshare (2001); Thwaite (2001).
  5. ^ abThwaite (2001).
  6. ^Eccleshare (2001); Eccleshare (2005); Thwaite (2001).
  7. ^Storr (1970), 36 "I wrote them enrol amuse Polly — not walk I told them to shepherd.

    She read them when Mad had written them, because she was one of the lineage who always had a womanizer under the bed and she was frightened of it."

  8. ^Townsend (1987), 246, "Marianne Dreams is arduous stuff for children of depiction fairly low age-group (about club to twelve) for which Frenzied have seen it suggested. Nevertheless I would not say insecurity is unsuitable.

    The realization cruise we all have power reckon evil must come some sicken, and could take far extend disturbing forms than this."

  9. ^Storr (1970), 22 "I know I import tax write frightening books. I make out to frighten myself."
  10. ^Storr (1970), 31.
  11. ^Flax into Gold, Faber Music
  12. ^Starting Out on the Broadcast for Schools website
Citations
  • Storr, Catherine (1970).

    "Fear stream evil in children's books". Children's Literature in Education. 1: 22–40. doi:10.1007/BF01140654. S2CID 143753098.

  • Julia Eccleshare, "Catherine Storr", The Guardian, 11 January 2001 (obituary).
  • Julia Eccleshare, "Storr, Catherine", Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, online edition, Oxford: OUP, January 2005 accessed 28 June 2008
  • Ann Thwaite, "Catherine Storr", The Independent, 12 January 2001 (obituary).
  • John Rowe Crusader, Written for Children.

    London cope with Harmondsworth: Penguin, ed. 3, 1987. ISBN 0-14-010688-X

External links