Noel Streatfeild

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Standard Name: Streatfeild, Noel
Birth Name: Mary Noel Streatfeild
Pseudonym: Noelle Sonning
Pseudonym: Susan Scarlett
Pseudonym: Vicky Strangeways
NS published over five decades of the twentieth century, from the 1930s. Arguably all but seventeen of her sixty-four books were aimed at children. (Some books are classified both ways.) Her adult novels are notable for their depiction of women coping with definingly modern issues of earning a living and weathering society's changing attitudes to sex, divorce, and instability, and of alternatives both to the bourgeois or gentry family (the stage, the circus) and to the dominant society. Her first novel for children, Ballet Shoes, made her famous overnight by its appeal to young girls who were mad about dancing. In her later fiction for children NS continued to present very young professional artists developing their skills; this favourite subject-matter is linked with an unusual capacity to take children seriously. NS also wrote plays from early in her career, and later wrote radio and television scripts from her own work, in addition to non-fiction books, anthologies, biography, and heavily fictionalised autobiography, as well as a series of pot-boiling romance novels which she did not wish to have considered as part of her oeuvre.

Connections

Connections Author name Sort descending Excerpt
Textual Production Lady Cynthia Asquith
Her ten anthologies edited during the 1920s (some of them under pseudonyms such as Leonard Gray) had some significance for the writing of that decade, since they incorporated contributions from, for instance, Marghanita Laski
Intertextuality and Influence Joanna Cannan
Noel Streatfeild had already launched the ballet story with Ballet Shoes—which, first published in 1931 under the title The Whicharts, appeared under its better-known name in the same year as A Pony for...
Anthologization Jean Ingelow
In 1960 Mopsa was included in To the Land of Fair Delight, a collection with an introduction by Noel Streatfeild which also includes tales by G. E. Farrow and George MacDonald . In 1992...
Friends, Associates Storm Jameson
Jameson met Romer Wilson , Charles Morgan , and J. W. N. Sullivan through her Knopf connections. By about 1924 she and Edith Sitwell had visited each other's homes. Jameson felt that in spite of...
Textual Production Storm Jameson
Jameson had been approached by the Ministry of Information once the USA had entered World War II, for suggestions on how to cement Anglo-American relations.
Jameson, Storm. Journey from the North. Harper and Row.
524
The resulting volume includes work by Phyllis Bentley ,...
Reception E. Nesbit
In 1915 EN was granted a Civil List pension of sixty pounds a year. She was pleased but not overwhelmed at this honour, and thought it ought not to have been taxed.
Briggs, Julia. A Woman of Passion: The Life of E. Nesbit, 1858-1924. Hutchinson.
365-6
She evidently...
Literary responses Dodie Smith
The book was immediately popular. Noel Streatfeild chose it as her Book of the Month in Young Elizabethan magazine, and Foyle's Children's Book Club bought 20,000 copies. Reviews were glowing: the Times Literary Supplement described...
Occupation Dorothy Whipple
She sometimes did voluntary work, visiting schools and directing patients at an ante-natal clinic which made her feel embarrassed to be clean, warmly dressed and not pregnant. I felt the lot of the working-class woman...

Timeline

1934: Patricia Lynch published The Turf-Cutter's...

Writing climate item

1934

Patricia Lynch published The Turf-Cutter's Donkey: one of a new wave of characterful books for children which also included P. L. Travers , Enid Bagnold , Noel Streatfeild , and Eve Garnett .

29 March 1972: A major exhibition of ancient Egyptian treasures...

Building item

29 March 1972

A major exhibition of ancient Egyptian treasures associated with the boy pharaoh Tutankhamun opened at the British Museum , to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the opening of the treasures on 16 February 1923.

By 20 June 2000: Jane Nissen, a former editor at Penguin,...

Writing climate item

By 20 June 2000

Jane Nissen , a former editor at Penguin , published the first four titles by Jane Nissen Books , reprints of much-loved children's books of the twentieth century.

9 December 2006-17 July 2007: The National Portrait Gallery in London mounted...

Writing climate item

9 December 2006-17 July 2007

The National Portrait Gallery in London mounted an exhibition of photographs of women writers, mostly novelists, from 1920 to 1960.

Texts

Streatfeild, Noel, and Charles Mozley. A Vicarage Family. Collins, 1963.
Streatfeild, Noel, and Margery Gill. Apple Bough. Collins, 1962.
Streatfeild, Noel. Aunt Clara. Collins, 1952.
Streatfeild, Noel. Ballet Shoes. J. M. Dent, 1936.
Streatfeild, Noel. Caroline England. William Heinemann, 1937.
Streatfeild, Noel, and Betty Maxey. Gemma. Armada, 1968.
Streatfeild, Noel. I Ordered a Table for Six. Collins, 1942.
Nesbit, E. et al. Long Ago When I Was Young. Whiting and Wheaton, 1966.
Streatfeild, Noel. Luke. Heinemann, 1939.
Streatfeild, Noel. Magic and the Magician. Ernest Benn, 1958.
Streatfeild, Noel. Noel Streatfeild’s Christmas Stories. Virago, 2018.
Streatfeild, Noel. Saplings. Collins, 1945.
Streatfeild, Noel, and Shirley Hughes. The Bell Family. Collins, 1954.
Streatfeild, Noel, and Shirley Hughes. The Bell Family. Collins, 1965.
Streatfeild, Noel, and Steven Spurrier. The Circus is Coming. J. M. Dent, 1938.
Streatfeild, Noel, and Dorothea Braby. The Fearless Treasure. Michael Joseph, 1953.
Streatfeild, Noel, and Antony Maitland. The Maitlands, All Change at Cuckly Place. W. H. Allen, 1979.
Streatfeild, Noel, and Ley Kenyon. The Painted Garden. Collins, 1949.
Streatfeild, Noel. The Silent Speaker. Collins, 1961.
Streatfeild, Noel. The Whicharts. William Heinemann, 1931.
Streatfeild, Noel. The Winter is Past. Collins.
Ingelow, Jean et al. To the Land of Fair Delight. Franklin Watts, 1960.