Eleanor Farjeon

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EF had a particularly long and successful career as an author for children, writing mostly in verse with some prose tales. She also wrote striking memoirs of her childhood and of an unhappy love-affair ended by the First World War, plays (in collaboration with her brother), novels, and adult poetry. She wrote to earn a living, and did not hesitate to recycle slightly revised material in different forms. During the 1920s, she averaged two books a year.
Farjeon, Annabel. Morning has Broken: A Biography of Eleanor Farjeon. Julia MacRae, 1986.
172, 154
Outside her light-hearted or her fantastical vein she is sometimes sentimental, but her remarkable portraits of battered, gallant old women are a positive feature in several different genres.
Black-and-white photograph of Eleanor Farjeon sitting on a chair looking left. She is wearing glasses and a dark dress with a white shawl draped over her neck. Her hair is short and wavy, and she is smiling slightly.
"Eleanor Farjeon" Retrieved from https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f4/Eleanor_Farjeon_%28%D0%AD%D0%BB%D0%B5%D0%B0%D0%BD%D0%BE%D1%80_%D0%A4%D0%B0%D1%80%D0%B4%D0%B6%D0%BE%D0%BD%29.jpg. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal (CC0 1.0) Public Domain Dedication license. This work is in the public domain.

Milestones

13 February 1881
EF was born in Buckingham Street, London, the third of five children, and the only daughter.
Farjeon, Annabel. Morning has Broken: A Biography of Eleanor Farjeon. Julia MacRae, 1986.
prelims, 15
1935
EF published a nostalgic family memoir, A Nursery in the Nineties, which is probably her best-known book.
Blain, Virginia, Patricia Clements, and Isobel Grundy, editors. The Feminist Companion to Literature in English: Women Writers from the Middle Ages to the Present. Yale University Press; Batsford, 1990.
December 1941
EF published Magic Casements, a book of essays in which she argued the benefits for young people of undirected, pleasurable, imaginative reading.
British Book News. British Council.
(1941): 890
5 June 1965
EF died at her own home in Hampstead, of bronchitis, which had turned into pneumonia.
Farjeon, Annabel. Morning has Broken: A Biography of Eleanor Farjeon. Julia MacRae, 1986.
299

Biography

Birth and Background

13 February 1881
EF was born in Buckingham Street, London, the third of five children, and the only daughter.
Farjeon, Annabel. Morning has Broken: A Biography of Eleanor Farjeon. Julia MacRae, 1986.
prelims, 15