Vera Southgate

Vera Southgate (birth name Pegg) was born in County Durham in March 1916 and was raised alongside her sister Mary. Both sisters would eventually train and become teachers in their own right. Vera's career was varied, and she taught children of many ages including infant, junior, secondary and also at special schools. 

In 1942 she married Arthur Southgate and stopped teaching for a while.  Sadly, Vera was widowed only six years later in 1948 and, having no children, she returned to teaching, this time in Manchester where she met and married her second husband Douglas Thomas Booth in 1961.  Despite this, Vera kept the surname 'Southgate' for most of her published works.

It appears from looking at her academic, teaching and writing career that Vera was very dedicated to children's literacy.  This included studies that worked on discovering and implementing the most effective and quickest methods to help children of different ages to learn to read and how to monitor a child's progress throughout these studies.   After the completion of these different studies, including ones for government, she would then publish papers, sometimes collaborating with another author.  Vera's expertise at the time was obviously sought after, with her even giving notable speeches on reading at some international gatherings.

Applying what she had learned from her teaching career and these studies, Vera also wrote and co-wrote a number of books and primers for children that were easy to read and encouraged rapid progress in this area. In 1959, she co-wrote the series 'The Sounds and Words Reading Scheme' along with John Havenhand.  In the early 1960s, she again collaborated with Havenhand on three of the Ladybird Books ‘People at Work’, Series 606b. 

Following these initial titles for Wills & Hepworth's Ladybird Books series, Southgate would continue working for them on the 606 series, which subdivided into A, B and C Easy Reading, and then probably the most famous of the series - 606d Well-loved Tales (also Easy Reading).  The Well-loved Tales series originally contained 27 titles all retold by Southgate and published between 1964 and 1974, Over 20 of these titles were later republished between 1979 and 1991 with new illustrations. The series was further added to with new titles being published between 1979 and 1988.

All titles in the original Well-loved Tales series are either fairy tales by famous authors such as Hans Christian Andersen, the Brothers Grimm and others, or original folk tales and traditional tales. They have all been retold in simple language by Southgate. With each title a child would add to and consolidate the vocabulary already learned, but in a fun and easy way. Along with Southgate's easy-to-read text on one page, each title also boasted a full-page colour illustration on the opposite page, another timeless tool to help the imagination, along with learning. This series is among some of the most popular and most collected Ladybird Books of all time.

In the early 1980s Southgate retired and along with her husband moved to Sidmouth in Devon, where they stayed until Douglas' death in 1986. Although she was technically retired during this period, she still had a few academic papers published and she spoke at an address in London.  After being widowed for a second time, Vera then returned to County Durham to be among her extended family, until her death in March 1995.

Credits:
Wikipedia
ladybirdflyawayhome.com
readinghalloffame.org

Contributed by Joanne

(Published 30th May 2023)