Title: Monica Edwards: The Authorised Biography
Author: Brian Parks
Publisher: Girls Gone By
Date: 2010
Pages: 203
Format: Large format paperback
Description
Monica Edwards is one of our best-loved and most popular children’s writers; this is the first biography to appear of her, commissioned by her family and written by Brian Parks, an expert on her books. It tells the fascinating story of the bright vicar’s daughter who barely went to school, who grew up in Rye Harbour (the fictional Westling) and lost two friends to sudden death in her teens, worked briefly with horses before maintaining a challenging, passionate and sometimes stormy marriage to a man very different from her, and who wrote warm family books filled with details taken from her own surprisingly unconventional home life at Punch Bowl Farm.
The many quoted sources include Monica Edwards’s own diaries and notebooks, where her books first took form (and several tantalising ideas for stories that were never written); articles she wrote describing her home life; the sale brochure for Punch Bowl Farm; contemporary reviews of her books; and her letters, including several from the teenage Monica describing her reactions to the turbulent events in her life at the time. The book is extensively illustrated with drawings from her books and magazine articles, and previously unpublished photos.
