Background
Burton was born Hester Wood-Hill in Beccles, Suffolk, on 6 December 1913.
Burton was born Hester Wood-Hill in Beccles, Suffolk, on 6 December 1913.
From 1925 to 1936 she was educated at Headington School and Street Anne"s College, Oxford, where she received an honours degree in English.
Many of her books including Time of Trial were illustrated by Victor Ambrus. Her principal publisher was the Oxford University Press. She worked for the Oxford University Press from 1956 to 1964, contributing two volumes to the Oxford Sheldonian English Series for secondary schoolchildren—Coleridge and the Wordsworths, 1953, and Tennyson, 1954—and working as an assistant editor in the revision of the Oxford Junior Encyclopaedia.
She also edited two anthologies, A Book of Modern Stories (1959) and Her First Ball (1959).
Burton"s historical fiction tended to share the radical and liberal perspective popularised by Geoffrey Trease. Many of her books are set in her home county of Suffolk and many show a particular interest in the sea.
Burton died in Oxford following a stroke at age 86, on 17 September 2000.