ALISON UTTLEYAlison Uttley, a popular author of children's books, died on 7 May, 1976, at the age of 91.She wrote more than 100 books including a series of stories about Little Grey Rabbit.Born Alice Jane Taylor in Cromford, Derbyshire, on 17 December 1884, she was educated at Bakewell's Lady Manners School andparticularly loved science lessons. She won a scholarship to Manchester University to study physics and in 1906 became only the second woman honours graduate there.She was also an Edwardian suffragette and a close friend of Ramsay MacDonald - to whose children she reportedly told bedtime stories.She carried out teacher training in Cambridge and in 1908became a physics teacher at Fulham Secondary School for Girls. Three years later she married James Arthur Uttley.Her husband drowned himself in 1930, his health having been broken by his service in World War I. Mrs Uttley turned to writing to help support herself and her son, John, as The Great Depression of the 1930s caused worldwide economic turmoil.Her first books were a series of tales about animals, including Little Grey Rabbit, The Little Red Fox, Sam Pig and Hare. She later wrote for older children and adults.Her childhood in rural Derbyshire had a big influence on her work, notably her semi-autobiographica lThe Country Child (1931).A Traveller in Time (1939) - one of her most highly-acclaimed works - was a book she based on the Babington Plot of Anthony Babington at Dethick, near her family home.Eventually she settled in Beaconsfield, Buckinghamshire, in a house she named Thackers after the manor house in A Traveller in TimeMrs Uttley was awarded an Honorary Doctor of Letters degree by Manchester University in 1970 in recognition of her literary work.Her private diaries, which she kept for more than 40 years, were published in 2009, edited by Professor Denis Judd who had previously written her biography.
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