Philippa Pearce
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Ann Philippa Pearce OBE (22 January 1920 – 21 December 2006) was an
English English usually refers to: * English language * English people English may also refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England ** English national ide ...
author of
children's books A child ( : children) is a human being between the stages of birth and puberty, or between the developmental period of infancy and puberty. The legal definition of ''child'' generally refers to a minor, otherwise known as a person younge ...
. Best known of them is the time-slip novel ''
Tom's Midnight Garden ''Tom's Midnight Garden'' is a children's fantasy novel by Philippa Pearce. It was first published in 1958 by Oxford University Press with illustrations by Susan Einzig. It has been reissued in print many times and also adapted for radio, tele ...
'', which won the 1958 Carnegie Medal from the Library Association, as the year's outstanding children's book by a British subject. Pearce was a commended runner-up for the Medal a further four times.


Early life

Philippa Pearce was the youngest of four children of a flour miller and corn merchant, Ernest Alexander Pearce, and his wife Gertrude Alice ''née'' Ramsden, who lived at the Mill House by the River Cam in the village of
Great Shelford Great Shelford is a village located approximately to the south of Cambridge, in the county of Cambridgeshire, in eastern England. In 1850 Great Shelford parish contained bisected by the river Cam. The population in 1841 was 803 people. By 2001 ...
, Cambridgeshire, where she was brought up. She started school only at the age of eight because of illness, then she went on to attend the Perse School for Girls in
Cambridge Cambridge ( ) is a College town, university city and the county town in Cambridgeshire, England. It is located on the River Cam approximately north of London. As of the 2021 United Kingdom census, the population of Cambridge was 145,700. Cam ...
and win a scholarship to
Girton College, Cambridge Girton College is one of the 31 constituent colleges of the University of Cambridge. The college was established in 1869 by Emily Davies and Barbara Bodichon as the first women's college in Cambridge. In 1948, it was granted full college statu ...
to read English and History. After gaining her degree, Pearce moved to London, where she found work as a civil servant. Later she wrote and produced schools' radio programmes for the
BBC #REDIRECT BBC #REDIRECT BBC Here i going to introduce about the best teacher of my life b BALAJI sir. He is the precious gift that I got befor 2yrs . How has helped and thought all the concept and made my success in the 10th board exam. ...
...
, where she remained for 13 years. She was a children's editor at the
Oxford University Press Oxford University Press (OUP) is the university press of the University of Oxford. It is the largest university press in the world, and its printing history dates back to the 1480s. Having been officially granted the legal right to print books ...
from 1958 to 1960 and at the
André Deutsch André Deutsch (15 November 1917 – 11 April 2000) was a Hungarian-born British publisher who founded an eponymous publishing company in 1951. Biography Deutsch was born on 15 November 1917 in Budapest, Hungary, the son of a Jewish dentis ...
publishing firm from 1960 to 1967.


Writing career

In 1951 Pearce spent a long period in hospital recovering from
tuberculosis Tuberculosis (TB) is an infectious disease usually caused by '' Mycobacterium tuberculosis'' (MTB) bacteria. Tuberculosis generally affects the lungs, but it can also affect other parts of the body. Most infections show no symptoms, i ...
. She passed the time there thinking about a
canoe A canoe is a lightweight narrow water vessel, typically pointed at both ends and open on top, propelled by one or more seated or kneeling paddlers facing the direction of travel and using a single-bladed paddle. In British English, the ter ...
trip she had taken many years before, which became the inspiration for her first book, a 241-page novel '' Minnow on the Say'', published by Oxford in 1955 with illustrations by Edward Ardizzone. It was a commended runner-up for the annual Carnegie Medal. Like several of her subsequent books, it was inspired by the area where she had been raised: the villages of Great and Little Shelford became Great and Little Barley. Cambridge became Castleford in the book (nothing to do with the real town of the same name in West Yorkshire) and lost its university; the River Cam became the River Say. ''Minnow'' was published in the US as ''The Minnow Leads to Treasure'' (1958). It was
adapted In biology, adaptation has three related meanings. Firstly, it is the dynamic evolutionary process of natural selection that fits organisms to their environment, enhancing their evolutionary fitness. Secondly, it is a state reached by the po ...
for television in Canada as a 1960 TV series with the original title, and for British television in 1972 as ''Treasure over the Water''. Pearce's second book was ''
Tom's Midnight Garden ''Tom's Midnight Garden'' is a children's fantasy novel by Philippa Pearce. It was first published in 1958 by Oxford University Press with illustrations by Susan Einzig. It has been reissued in print many times and also adapted for radio, tele ...
'', published by Oxford in 1958. Its "midnight garden" was based directly on the garden of the Mill House where Pearce was raised. The novel has become one of the classic time-slip stories for children, initiated by Alison Uttley with ''A Traveller in Time'' in 1939. ''Tom's Midnight Garden'' inspired a film, a stage play and three TV series. It won the annual Carnegie Medal and for the 70th anniversary celebration in 2007, a panel named it one of the top ten Medal-winning works, which composed the ballot for a public election of the nation's favourite, in which ''Tom's Midnight Garden'' finished second in the vote, between two books that were about 40 years younger. Pearce wrote over 30 books, including ''A Dog So Small'' (1962), '' The Squirrel Wife'' (1971), ''The Battle of
Bubble and Squeak Bubble and squeak is a British dish made from cooked potatoes and cabbage, mixed together and fried. The food writer Howard Hillman classes it as one of the "great peasant dishes of the world".Hillman, pp. 62–63 The dish has been known sin ...
'' (1978) and ''The Way To Sattin Shore'' (1983). ''The Shadow Cage and other tales of the supernatural'' (1977), ''Bubble and Squeak'', and ''Sattin Shore'' were the later three of her four Carnegie Medal runners-up. ''The Battle of Bubble and Squeak'' inspired a two-part television adaptation in
Channel 4 Channel 4 is a British free-to-air public broadcast television network operated by the state-owned Channel Four Television Corporation. It began its transmission on 2 November 1982 and was established to provide a fourth television service ...
's ''Talk, Write and Read'' series of educational programming. Although not a prolific author of full-length books, Philippa Pearce continued to work over subsequent years, as well as speaking at conferences, editing anthologies and writing short stories. She attended a 2002 reception for children's authors at
Number 10 Downing Street 10 Downing Street in London, also known colloquially in the United Kingdom as Number 10, is the official residence and executive office of the first lord of the treasury, usually, by convention, the prime minister of the United Kingdom. Along wi ...
, the home of the Prime Minister. In 2004 Pearce published her first new full-length book for two decades, ''The Little Gentleman''. One further children's novel was published posthumously in 2008: ''A Finder's Magic''.


Personal life

Pearce married Martin Christie in 1962. They had one daughter, who became a children's author herself, as Sally Christie. Martin Christie, who had never wholly recovered from being a Japanese prisoner of war, died in 1964. From 1973 until her death from complications of a stroke in 2006, Philippa Pearce lived once again in Great Shelford, down the lane where she was raised.


Legacy

Every September from 2008, the Philippa Pearce Lecture at
Homerton College, Cambridge Homerton College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge. Its first premises were acquired in Homerton, London in 1768, by an informal gathering of Protestant dissenters with origins in the seventeenth century. In 1894, the col ...
celebrates "excellence in writing for children and to emphasize its continuing vital importance." The lecturers are children's literature authors, scholars or critics, and most of the lectures are published online."The Philippa Pearce Memorial Lecture: celebrating excellence in children's literature"
Retrieved 18 November 2012.


Selected books

*'' Minnow on the Say'', illustrated by Edward Ardizzone (1955); US title, ''The Minnow Leads to Treasure'' *''
Tom's Midnight Garden ''Tom's Midnight Garden'' is a children's fantasy novel by Philippa Pearce. It was first published in 1958 by Oxford University Press with illustrations by Susan Einzig. It has been reissued in print many times and also adapted for radio, tele ...
'', illustrated by Susan Einzig (1958) *''A Dog So Small'' (1962) *''The Children of Charlecote'' (1968) *'' The Squirrel Wife'', illustrated by Derek Collard (1971) *''What the Neighbours Did and Other Stories'', illustrated by Faith Jaques, (1972) *''The Shadow Cage and Other Tales of the Supernatural'' (1977) *''The Battle of Bubble and Squeak'' (1978) *''The Way to Sattin Shore'' (1983) *''The Little Gentleman'', illustrated by Patrick Benson (2004); US ed., illustrated by Tom Pohrt *''A Finder's Magic'' (2008)


Notes


References


External links

*
Philippa Pearce
at
Walker Books Walker Books is a British publisher of children's books, founded in 1978 by Sebastian Walker, Amelia Edwards, and Wendy Boase. In 1991, the success of Walker Books' ''Where's Wally?'' series enabled the company to expand into the American ma ...
*
"Philippa Pearce"
(Fellows Remembered), The Royal Society of Literature *Philippa Pearce profile o
Great Shelford website
where she was born and bred {{DEFAULTSORT:Pearce, Philippa 1920 births 2006 deaths English children's writers Carnegie Medal in Literature winners Alumni of Girton College, Cambridge People educated at the Perse School for Girls People from Great Shelford Writers from London Fellows of the Royal Society of Literature Officers of the Order of the British Empire English women novelists