Pamela Mary Royds (

née The birth name is the name of the person given upon their birth. The term may be applied to the surname, the given name or to the entire name. Where births are required to be officially registered, the entire name entered onto a births registe ...

Maycock; 17 August 1924 – 31 May 2016) was a British publisher and

children's book Children's literature or juvenile literature includes stories, books, magazines, and poems that are created for children. In addition to conventional literary genres, modern children's literature is classified by the intended age of the reade ...

editor.

Early life

Royds was born in London, the daughter of Lilian (née Youngman) and Thomas Maycock, who ran a

Smithfield Market Smithfield, properly known as West Smithfield, is a district located in Central London, part of Farringdon Without, the most westerly Wards of the City of London, ward of the City of London, England. Smithfield is home to a number of City in ...

import business. She was educated at Eothen School,

Caterham Caterham () is a town in the Tandridge (district), Tandridge district of Surrey, England. The town is administratively divided into two: Caterham on the Hill, and Caterham Valley, which includes the main town centre in the middle of a dry valle ...

, and

St Hugh's College, Oxford St Hugh's College is a Colleges of the University of Oxford, constituent college of the University of Oxford. It is located on a site on St Margaret's Road, to the north of the city centre. It was founded in 1886 by Elizabeth Wordsworth as a ...

Career

In 1964, Royds joined the British publishing firm

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 dentist ...

to stand in for the then editor,

Philippa Pearce Ann Philippa Pearce OBE FRSL (22 January 1920 – 21 December 2006) was an English author of children's books. Best known of them is the time-slip novel '' Tom's Midnight Garden'', which won the 1958 Carnegie Medal from the Library Associati ...

, while on maternity leave. The poet

Michael Rosen Michael Wayne Rosen (born 7 May 1946) is an English children's author, poet, presenter, political columnist, broadcaster, activist, and academic, who is a professor of children's literature in the Department of Educational Studies at Goldsmiths ...

credits Royds with "discovering" him, after being rejected by several other publishers.

Personal life

In 1952, she married Alex Royds, an ''

Eastern Daily Press The ''Eastern Daily Press'' (''EDP'') is a regional newspaper covering Norfolk, northern parts of Suffolk Suffolk ( ) is a ceremonial county in the East of England and East Anglia. It is bordered by Norfolk to the north, the North Sea to ...

'' journalist, and they had three daughters and a son together.

References

1924 births 2016 deaths Alumni of St Hugh's College, Oxford British book publishers (people) People educated at Caterham School Women book publishers (people) English book editors Women print editors Place of death missing Publishers (people) from London 20th-century English businesspeople {{Publish-bio-stub