East Anglian Writers

Ann Thwaite

Biography

• Waiting for the party, the Life of Frances Hodgson Burnett (1974 and 1994. Reissued in 2007 as Frances Hodgson Burnett, beyond the Secret Garden.

• Edmund Gosse: A Literary Landscape (Duff Cooper Prize 1985) Reissued in 2007

• A.A. Milne: his life (Whitbread Biography of the Year, 1990) Reissued in 2006.

• Glimpses of the Wonderful, the life of Philip Henry Gosse, 2002.
  
  

Other:

• The Young Traveller in Japan, 1958.

• The House in Turner Square, 1960..

• The Camelthorn Papers, 1969.

• The Only Treasure, 1970..

• Tracks, 1978.

• Gilbert and the Birthday Cake, 1986.

• The Brilliant Career of Winnie-the-Pooh, 1992.

• The House at Hilly Fields, 1996.

Edited:

• ALLSORTS, an annual 1968 – 1975

• ALLSORTS of Poems 1978

• My Oxford 1977

• Portraits from Life by Edmund Gosse 1991.

Biography:

Born in London, Ann Thwaite spent the war years in New Zealand, returning to complete her education at Queen Elizabeth’s, Barnet, and St Hilda’s College, Oxford. She has lived in Tokyo, Benghazi and Nashville, Tennessee. She has lectured in many countries, but most of her life has been spent as a writer, and she is now settled in Norfolk with her husband, the poet Anthony Thwaite. She is an Oxford D.Litt., and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. She is an Honorary Fellow of Roehampton University (National Centre for Research into Children’s Literature) and has an honorary doctorate from the University of East Anglia.
For forty years Ann Thwaite wrote children’s books, including The Camelthorn Papers (1969), translated into Japanese and Greek, Tracks, a New Zealand story, and a much-loved picture book, Gilbert and the Birthday Cake. Jan Mark included her story Feeding the Cats in the Oxford Book of Children’s Stories (1993). She reviewed children’s books, mainly in the Times Literary Supplement, for many years, and ran a library for local children in her home.

The Brilliant Career of Winnie-the-Pooh, a scrapbook off-shoot of her Milne biography, was published on both sides of the Atlantic in 1992. She edited (1968-1975) Allsorts, an annual collection which included new work for children by such writers as Michael Frayn, James Fenton, Penelope Lively and William Trevor.
My Oxford (1977) contained memories of their time there by writers including John Mortimer, Antonia Fraser and Martin Amis. Her edition of Portraits from Life is a collection (1991) of Edmund Gosse’s essays on his friends, including Henry Jams, Robert Louis Stevenson and Thomas Hardy.