Eleanor Farjeon
Eleanor Farjeon was an English author born on February 13, 1881, in London, into a family rich in literary and artistic talent. Her father, Benjamin Leopold Farjeon, was a novelist, and her upbringing fostered her creativity, as she was privately educated and encouraged to explore literature. Farjeon is best known for her contributions to children's literature, where she skillfully integrated moral lessons without being overly didactic, allowing her works to remain relevant and engaging. Her writing career began with poetry and short pieces for the satirical magazine Punch, leading to acclaimed collections of children's stories and poetry.
Throughout her life, she advocated for respecting children's intelligence by using sophisticated vocabulary in her writing. Farjeon's literary achievements earned her numerous awards, including the Eleanor Farjeon Award in children's literature, which continues to honor excellence in the field. In her later years, she converted to Catholicism and became quite devout. Farjeon passed away on June 5, 1965, shortly after completing an introduction for a collection of Edward Thomas's poetry for children, leaving behind a rich legacy in literature.
Eleanor Farjeon
English children's novelist and poet.
- Born: February 13, 1881
- Birthplace: London, England
- Died: June 5, 1965
- Place of death:Hampstead, London
Biography
Eleanor Farjeon was born in London on February 13, 1881, to a literary and artistic family. Her father, Benjamin Leopold Farjeon, was a noted novelist, while two of her brothers were writers and another was a composer. She was educated privately at home, as was not uncommon for young women of quality at that time, and later considered her rather unorthodox father’s way of teaching her to be the cradle of her writing.
Farjeon was encouraged to explore her father’s extensive personal library and to ask questions about what she had read. Throughout her life she was able to maintain a childlike sense of wonder about life and the world, and this mindset was the wellspring of her stories’ strength. One of her notable talents was her ability to impart moral values in her stories without becoming preachy or overly sentimental, and as a result her stories have retained their freshness while many of the overtly didactic stories common when she began her writing career have become stiff and dated, of interest only to scholars of the period.
Farjeon began her writing career relatively early, producing poems and other brief works for the satirical periodical Punch. From there, she expanded to writing for other newspapers, and finally writing collections of children’s stories and poems that were well received. As she became well known and respected, she encouraged other writers for children not to write down to children, or to avoid vocabulary thought to be too sophisticated for them.
Although Farjeon appears to have been an agnostic in her youth, practicing no formal religion, in her old age she converted to Catholicism and became quite devout. She died on June 5, 1965, shortly after completing the introduction to a collection of Edward Thomas’s poetry for children. Her name has been memorialized in the Eleanor Farjeon award in children’s literature, given annually by the Children’s Book Circle.
Author Works
Children's Literature:
Gypsy and Ginger, 1920
Martin Pippin in the Apple Orchard, 1922
Mighty Men, 1924-1925 (2 volumes)
Faithful Jenny Dove and Other Tales, 1925
Nuts and May, 1925
Italian Peepshow, 1926
Kaleidoscope, 1928
The Tale of Tom Tiddler, 1929
Tales from Chaucer, 1930
Old Nurse's Stocking Basket, 1931
The Fair of St. James: A Fantasia, 1932
Perkin the Pedlar, 1932
Kings and Queens, 1932 (with Herbert Farjeon)
Heroes and Heroines, 1933 (with Herbert Farjeon)
Jim at the Corner, 1934
Humming Bird: A Novel, 1936
Ten Saints, 1936
Martin Pippin in the Daisy Field, 1937
The Wonders of Herodotus, 1937
One Foot in Fairyland: Sixteen Tales, 1938
The New Book of Days, 1941
Brave Old Woman, 1941
Ariadne and the Bull, 1945
Silver-Sand and Snow, 1951
The Little Bookroom, 1955
Fiction:
The Soul of Kol Nikon, 1923
Ladybrook, 1931
Miss Granby's Secret, 1940
Nonfiction:
Arthur Rackham: The Wizard at Home, 1914
A Nursery in the Nineties, 1935
Edward Thomas: The Last Four Years, 1958
Poetry:
Pan-Worship: And Other Poems, 1908
Nursery Rhymes of London Town, 1916
Sonnets and Poems, 1918
Moonshine, 1921
The Children's Bells, 1957
Drama:
The Two Bouquets, 1936 (with Herbert Farjeon)
Granny Grey, 1939
The Glass Slipper, 1944 (with Herbert Farjeon)
The Silver Curlew, 1949
Bibliography
Godden, Rumer. "Tea with Eleanor Farjeon." Horn Book Magazine, vol. 68, no. 1, 1992, pp. 48+. Godden, also a well-regarded children's author, writes about her memories of Farjeon.
Greene, Ellin Peterson. "Eleanor Farjeon: The Shaping of a Literary Imagination." The Child and the Story: An Exploration of Narrative Forms, edited by Priscilla Ord, Children's Literature Association, 1983, pp 61–70. An exploration of the link between Farjeon's childhood imaginative games, as discussed in her memoir A Nursery in the Nineties, and her later writing for children.
Higonnet, Margaret R. "Women's Poetry of the First World War." The Cambridge Companion to Poetry of the First World War, edited by Santanu Das, Cambridge UP, 2013, pp. 185–95. Discusses Farjeon's poems about World War I.