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Pauline Clarke
Pauline Clarke (19 May 1921 – 23 July 2013) was an English author who wrote for younger children under the name Helen Clare, for older children as Pauline Clarke, and later for adults under her married name Pauline Hunter Blair. Her best-known work is The Twelve and the Genii, a low fantasy children's novel published by Faber in 1962, for which she won the 1962 Carnegie Medal, the Lewis Carroll Shelf Award, and the 1968 Deutscher Jugendliteraturpreis.
Anne Pauline Clarke was born in Kirkby-in-Ashfield in Nottinghamshire in 1921 and later lived in Bottisham, Cambridgeshire. She was educated at schools in London and Colchester before entering Somerville College, Oxford in 1940 to read English. After leaving Oxford in 1943, she worked as a journalist and wrote for children's magazines. Between 1948 and 1972 she wrote books for children.
Clarke married the historian Peter Hunter Blair in 1969.[citation needed] She edited his history Anglo-Saxon Northumbria (1984).
Clarke donated 19 prints by Cecil Leslie, who illustrated Clarke's work The Pekinese Princess, to the British Museum.
She died on 23 July 2013 at the age of 92.[citation needed]
Clarke wrote many types of children's book including fantasies, family comedies, historical novels and poetry.
The Pekinese Princess (1948), Clarke's first book, is a long-ago fantasy of talking animals and trees in a fairy tale Chinese setting, a human-like world without humans. The text also makes reference to the Buddha. The fantasy ends with an apotheosis of immortality. The "merciful Jade Emperor ... picked up the kingdom by the four corners of the plain, as in a blanket, and planted it whole upon the mountain in the middle of the world, where the immortals dwell" (p 125). The story acts as a fable for how Pekinese remain on earth: "But some few Pekinese slipped out from the corners when the Lord of Heaven lifted the kingdom, and landed upon the earth again. These are they you see sometimes looking mournful ... for they are thinking with longing of their happy kingdom" (p 127).
Smith's Hoard (1955), also known as The Golden Collar, is a British school-holiday mystery story. A brother and sister are sent for the school holidays to their great-aunt who lives in the country. During their train trip they coincidentally meet a boastful young man who tells them he is a dealer in second-hand jewellery, and shows them a strange gold item. The children work to untangle a mystery which includes secret and illegal archaeological digging, theft of historical artefacts, and even the haunting by the ghost of the Celtic smith who buried the hoard and died in tribal warfare. The story is narrated by the younger sister (with some help from her brother and his friend), and, by the end, the mystery is solved.
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Pauline Clarke
Pauline Clarke (19 May 1921 – 23 July 2013) was an English author who wrote for younger children under the name Helen Clare, for older children as Pauline Clarke, and later for adults under her married name Pauline Hunter Blair. Her best-known work is The Twelve and the Genii, a low fantasy children's novel published by Faber in 1962, for which she won the 1962 Carnegie Medal, the Lewis Carroll Shelf Award, and the 1968 Deutscher Jugendliteraturpreis.
Anne Pauline Clarke was born in Kirkby-in-Ashfield in Nottinghamshire in 1921 and later lived in Bottisham, Cambridgeshire. She was educated at schools in London and Colchester before entering Somerville College, Oxford in 1940 to read English. After leaving Oxford in 1943, she worked as a journalist and wrote for children's magazines. Between 1948 and 1972 she wrote books for children.
Clarke married the historian Peter Hunter Blair in 1969.[citation needed] She edited his history Anglo-Saxon Northumbria (1984).
Clarke donated 19 prints by Cecil Leslie, who illustrated Clarke's work The Pekinese Princess, to the British Museum.
She died on 23 July 2013 at the age of 92.[citation needed]
Clarke wrote many types of children's book including fantasies, family comedies, historical novels and poetry.
The Pekinese Princess (1948), Clarke's first book, is a long-ago fantasy of talking animals and trees in a fairy tale Chinese setting, a human-like world without humans. The text also makes reference to the Buddha. The fantasy ends with an apotheosis of immortality. The "merciful Jade Emperor ... picked up the kingdom by the four corners of the plain, as in a blanket, and planted it whole upon the mountain in the middle of the world, where the immortals dwell" (p 125). The story acts as a fable for how Pekinese remain on earth: "But some few Pekinese slipped out from the corners when the Lord of Heaven lifted the kingdom, and landed upon the earth again. These are they you see sometimes looking mournful ... for they are thinking with longing of their happy kingdom" (p 127).
Smith's Hoard (1955), also known as The Golden Collar, is a British school-holiday mystery story. A brother and sister are sent for the school holidays to their great-aunt who lives in the country. During their train trip they coincidentally meet a boastful young man who tells them he is a dealer in second-hand jewellery, and shows them a strange gold item. The children work to untangle a mystery which includes secret and illegal archaeological digging, theft of historical artefacts, and even the haunting by the ghost of the Celtic smith who buried the hoard and died in tribal warfare. The story is narrated by the younger sister (with some help from her brother and his friend), and, by the end, the mystery is solved.