Constance Savery

Constance Savery
Savery in 1943
Savery in 1943
BornConstance Winifred Savery
(1897-10-31)31 October 1897
Froxfield, Wiltshire, England
Died2 March 1999(1999-03-02) (aged 101)
Stroud, Gloucestershire
Pen nameAnother Lady; Elizabeth Cloberry
OccupationWriter
LanguageEnglish
Alma materSomerville College, Oxford
Period1920–1999
GenreChildren's literature
Notable works
  • Emma (with Charlotte Brontë)
  • Enemy Brothers
  • Emeralds for the King
Website
constancesavery.com (bibliography)

Constance Winifred Savery (31 October 1897 – 2 March 1999) was a British writer of fifty novels and children's books,[1] as well as many short stories and articles. She was selected for the initial issue of the long-running series entitled The Junior Book of Authors (1951–2008) and for the first, 1971, volume of Anne Commire's Something About the Author, which reached volume 320 in 2018. Savery's World War II novel, Enemy Brothers, received praise[2][3][4][5] and remains in print. In 1980, at age eighty-two, she completed a Charlotte Brontë two-chapter fragment, which was published as "Emma by Charlotte Brontë and Another Lady". The book was translated into Dutch, Spanish, and Russian.[6]

Reared in a Wiltshire vicarage, Savery was prepared for university study at King Edward VI High School for Girls[7] in Birmingham. Earning an Exhibition (scholarship) to Somerville College, Oxford, she read English, and in 1920 was in the first group of women to be awarded a degree by the University of Oxford.[8][9] Seventy-five years later, she was honoured at Oxford as the last surviving member of that event.[10] She remained active to the end of a long life, completing a handwritten, 692-page revision of an unpublished manuscript just prior to her ninety-ninth birthday.[11]

  1. ^ The Writers Directory. New York: St. Martin's Press. 1979. p. 1098. ISBN 0-312-89426-0.
  2. ^ Jordan, Alice M. (September–October 1943). "The Booklist". Horn Book. XIX (5): 323.
  3. ^ Eaton, Anne Thaxter (1957). Treasure for the Taking (Revised ed.). New York: Viking Press. p. 167.
  4. ^ Viguers, Ruth Hill (1953), "The Golden Age", in Meigs, Cornelia (ed.), A Critical History of Children's Literature, New York: Macmillan Co., p. 245
  5. ^ Jocher, Katharine. "Briefer Comment". Social Forces. December 1943. 245.
  6. ^ Schonblom, Eric. Another Lady: A Biography of Constance Savery. 2017. Ch. 22. [Kindle] Retrieved from Amazon.com.
  7. ^ Vardy, Winifred I. King Edward VI High School for Girls: Birmingham 1883–1925, London: Benn, 1928. 127.
  8. ^ Oxford correspondent. "Degrees Conferred at Oxford". Yorkshire Post, 15 October 1920. 6.
  9. ^ Cite error: The named reference indyobit was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  10. ^ Blow, Helen. "That was an achievement of the first degree". The Citizen [Gloucestershire], 18 October 1995. 15.
  11. ^ Schonblom. Ch. 26.