Hester Burton
Hester Burton was an English author renowned for her contributions to children's literature, particularly during the 1960s and 1970s. Born in 1913 in Beccles, Suffolk, she faced significant health challenges in her early childhood, which sparked her imagination and fostered a love for reading. Burton pursued her education at Headington School and later Oxford University, where she studied English literature under notable figures like C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien. After marrying Reginald William Boteler Burton and raising three children, she began her writing career later in life, inspired by her work as a part-time teacher and editor.
Her first published work, "The Great Gale," emerged in 1960, paving the way for a prolific writing career that included over a dozen historical novels for children and young adults. Among her most celebrated books are "Castors Away!" and "Time of Trial," the latter winning the prestigious Carnegie Medal in 1963. Burton's literary achievements continued until her passing in 2000, leaving behind a legacy that highlights her passion for history and storytelling in children's literature.
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Hester Burton
Writer
- Born: December 6, 1913
- Birthplace: Beccles, Suffolk, England
- Died: September 17, 2000
- Place of death: Oxford, Oxfordshire, England
Biography
Hester Burton did not begin the writing for which she would be best known until she was in her late thirties and had raised a family and worked as an editor and teacher. Once she found her niche as a writer, however, she published a significant number of novels in the 1960’s and 1970’s.
Burton was born in 1913 in Beccles, Suffolk, England. Her parents were surgeon Henry G. Wood-Hill and Amy (Crowfoot) Wood-Hill. Her early childhood was marked by a series of serious illnesses when she was six years old—whooping cough, Asian influenza, and double pneumonia—that confined her to bed for long periods. Her illnesses contributed to her dependence on her imagination to occupy her thoughts but also significantly retarded her progress in learning to read. Once she began to read, however, she found herself in a world that reinforced her early imaginary worlds and would influence her later choice of career.
Burton was sent to Headington School in Oxford at the age of twelve and after graduation continued at Oxford University, where she completed an honors degree in English literature in 1936. At Oxford, Burton studied under authors C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien. In the year before she graduated, she met her future husband, Reginald William Boteler Burton, an Oxford tutor and lecturer in the classics, whom she married in 1937. The couple settled in Oxford, where they had three children, Catharine, Elizabeth, and Janet.
Burton was a young mother during World War II, and she and her husband harbored friends from London who had lost their homes in the bombings. Burton describes the summer of 1940 as the most perilous time she had ever known. Burton was occupied for much of the 1940’s with raising her family, but as her children began to enter school she resumed work, first as a part- time elementary school teacher, then as an editor of various anthologies, and, from 1956 to1961, as assistant editor of the Oxford Junior Encyclopaedia.
Burton’s work editing children’s literature inspired her to write children’s books. Beginning in 1960 with the publication of The Great Gale, a historical children’s novel telling the story of a catastrophic flood in East Anglia in 1953, Burton would go on to write seventeen additional novels, nearly all historical, for children and young adults. Two of Burton’s most well-known and celebrated novels were Castors Away! and Time of Trial, both published in the early 1960’s. Castors Away! tells the story of Admiral Nelson, a favorite hero of Burton’s, at the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805. The novel was the runner-up for the Carnegie Medal in 1962.
Her novel Time of Trial follows the trial of the young heroine’s bookseller father, who is accused of sedition. The novel won the prestigious Carnegie Medal in 1963. Her 1970 novel, Beyond the Weir Bridge, received the 1971 Boston Globe-Horn Book Award. Burton’s husband died in 1997, and Burton followed him three years later, on September 17, 2000, after suffering a stroke in her home at Oxford.