Gillian Avery

September 30, 1926 (age 89)

Reigate, Surrey, United Kingdom

lieutenant was adapted for television in 1990. She worked first as a journalist on the Surrey Mirror, then for Chambers"s Encyclopaedia and Oxford University Press. The first, The Warden"s Niece (1957), is a witty adventure story in which Maria runs away from her stultifying boarding school to live with her great-uncle, the head of an Oxford college. He decides to let her stay, impressed by her academic ambitions (she wants to become Professor of Greek), and she proves her abilities as a researcher by uncovering a piece of history from the English Civil War. Characters from The Warden"s Niece reappear in The Elephant War (1960), which is about an attempt to prevent the sale of Jumbo by the London Zoo to P. T. Barnum, and in The Italian Spring (1962). Avery died in January 2016 at the age of 89.

Gillian Avery Edit Profile

writer

Background

Gillian Avery was born in Reigate, Surrey, and attended Dunottar School there.

Career

lieutenant was adapted for television in 1990. She worked first as a journalist on the Surrey Mirror, then for Chambers"s Encyclopaedia and Oxford University Press. The first, The Warden"s Niece (1957), is a witty adventure story in which Maria runs away from her stultifying boarding school to live with her great-uncle, the head of an Oxford college.

He decides to let her stay, impressed by her academic ambitions (she wants to become Professor of Greek), and she proves her abilities as a researcher by uncovering a piece of history from the English Civil War.

Characters from The Warden"s Niece reappear in The Elephant War (1960), which is about an attempt to prevent the sale of Jumbo by the London Zoo to P. T. Barnum, and in The Italian Spring (1962). Avery died in January 2016 at the age of 89.

Achievements

She won the Guardian Children"s Fiction Prize in 1972, for A Likely Lad. Beside winning the Guardian Prize for A Likely Lad, Gillian Avery was three times a commended runner-up for the Carnegie Medal from the Library Association,which recognises the year"s best children"s book by a British writer: for The Warden"s Niece (1957), The Greatest Gresham (1962) and A Likely Lad (1971).