Stella & Rose's Books

Ivor Waters - for us, working here at Stella books, a familiar name among the thousands of books lining the shelves. Born in Chepstow in 1907, Harry Ivor Waters lived at 41 Hardwick Avenue. His family have roots in Chepstow going back to the late 1600s, at least. Perhaps it was only natural that he had a deep interest in all things pertaining to the history of Chepstow and produced many booklets and books about the area.

In the late 1920s Ivor won a poetry prize run by Britannia Magazine and used the prize money to finance foreign holidays. He studied Spanish and French at degree level, becoming so successful in Spanish that the Spanish Government presented him with a book! The war years were spent with service in Intelligence where his language skills proved to be immensely useful.

You might not have heard of Martin Waddell. In fact, even if you do know of him, you might think that he is far too new an author to have made any impact on the world of children’s literature. You would be mistaken!

Born on April 10th, 1941 in the city of Belfast, Waddell’s first night of life was spent under a metal-topped table sheltering from bombs during the Second World War. His childhood was spent in Belfast during a period of political unrest. This was to have a deep impact on the author.

Martin Waddell’s first ambition in life was to become a professional footballer. However, this was not to be and his next career choice was to be an author. Initially, Waddell intended to write adult fiction, much of which was influenced by his background and surroundings. A lot of his work was written under the pseudonym of Catherine Sefton. The name Martin Waddell was kept for books he described as ‘for amusement only’. However, his forte was writing for children.

Alison Uttley is probably best known for her Little Grey Rabbit books written for children. However, during her very successful career she wrote about 120 books on various subjects for children and adults. Her varied interests in dreams, time travel and country matters provided material for her writings, often revealing a woman of both sensitivity and perception.

Today her books are as much loved as they ever have been and remain popular to both adults and children. They have been reprinted on numerous occasions and the values of the first editions in particular have steadily risen in the last decade.

Alison was born in Derbyshire on 17th December 1884. She was christened Alice Jane Taylor, adopting the name Alison upon publication of her first book. Alison spent her childhood living on her parent’s farm. Life here was happy and secure and allowed her to develop a love of the countryside around her. Until the age of 7 Alison was taught at home by her mother. She then went to Lea Board School at Holloway about 2 miles from her home.

Derek Tangye (1912-1996) was a very well known author who lived in Cornwall for the most part of his life from the 1950s onwards. He wrote more than twenty books which became known as the Minack Chronicles - all about life on a flower farm situated between Penzance and Land's End.

The book I read was 'The Way to Minack'. I was hoping it would tell me about how he and his wife, Jeannie, came to be at 'Minack', a quiet cottage in a isolated spot of Cornwall. However, this book is an autobiography (as are all the Minack chronicles) which leads up to the end of his time in London, just before moving to Minack. Derek had never been away from Minack in fourteen years and a friend planted seeds of doubt by asking 'What do you miss?' (about London). So he and Jeannie take a trip to London to remind themselves of why they left in the first place.

E.H. SHEPARD Born on the 10th of December 1879, in St. John's Wood, at No. 55 Springfield Road. Ernest Howard Shepard was the youngest of three children.

In his first volume of his memoirs, 'Drawn from Memory', Shepard vividly recounts memories of his early life, reinforcing some of the more memorable moments with illustrations. An example of this is featured below. Septimus (the horse) is pictured in the background, a gift to Shepard from his 'Godmother-Aunt'. He thought that there must have been some "divine influence" leading his Aunt "away from the more useful gifts" and "that the Angel Garbriel disguised as the shop walker in Mr. James Shoolbred's Store, has led her to Septimus".

The late Peter Scott, son of the famous polar explorer Captain Robert Scott, was a man of many and varied talents. He was probably most famous as a conservationist - he established the Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust (WWT) in 1946 and later co-founded the World Wildlife Fund. He was also an accomplished sportsman, winning an Olympic Bronze Medal for solo dinghy sailing, and holding the title of British Open Gliding Champion, as well as being a skilled ice skater.

His atmospheric wildfowl paintings are well known, and he was author and illustrator of numerous books in addition to making appearances on television and radio.

 Books by Peter Scott.

Peter Scott wrote and illustrated books including 'Wild Chorus', 'Morning Flight', 'A Thousand Geese', 'Wild Geese and Eskimos', and his autobiography 'The Eye of the Wind', plus many more. He also illustrated an edition of Paul Gallico's 'The Snow Goose', and his pictures have featured regularly in the WWT's annual publication 'Wildfowl'. 

British author Leonard Malcolm Saville was born on the 21st February 1901 in Hastings, Sussex. Sent away to boarding school at the age of nine, he received the majority of his education at the Richmond Hill School in Surrey.

On leaving school at the age of 16, he stepped into the world of the book trade, when he started work for the Oxford University Press where he found books to fulfill booksellers' orders. After a short stay at Cassell and Company in their publicity department, he began work for The Amalgamated Press in London in the same post, but was later promoted to Sales Promotion Manager.

A little over one hundred years ago the Savery sisters, Winifred, Doreen, Christine, Phyllis, and Irene, posed for a seaside snapshot.  Their father, Rev. John Manly Savery, had exchanged livings at that time, leaving the flowering countryside of Froxfield in Wiltshire for a Birmingham parish, where there was a sooty garden but better schools and, presumably, an extra shilling or two at month's end.

Left: The Savery sisters, Winifred, Doreen, Christine, Phyllis, and Irene, as neatly haloed as a fond parent could wish (about 1906)

Even so, times were hard, and the oldest daughter, Winifred, wrote an unpublished account of how the fire was set ablaze in the hearth and the girls dressed in church finery for a visit from the bishop's wife.  When the visitor sent word that she would not be there, the fire was raked out to save coal, the Sunday dresses were hung up again, and a special treat (oranges to be sucked through sugar cubes) was distributed. Inevitably, the distinguished visitor arrived after all to be greeted by sticky girls in a chilly parlour!

I have often thought that the question 'Who is the most prolific writer of children's fiction?' would make an excellent question for televised quizzes. I can imagine 'Who wants to be a millionaire?' providing three good possible answers plus the obligatory outsider to beguile the competitor, eager to grab the £1,000,000 prize: Enid Blyton, W.E.Johns, Roald Dahl would be the obvious frontrunners.

Or perhaps University Challenge could offer this starter for ten: 'Which prolific writer of children's fiction's name never appeared on any of his works?' The answer is the man the fiftieth anniversary of whose death passed almost uncelebrated last Christmas Eve, Charles St-John Hamilton. He never wrote under that name, preferring a plethora of pseudonyms, the most common of which was Frank Richards of Billy Bunter fame.

Miss Read in her beautifully bucolic books continues in the genre started by Mrs. Gaskell's Cranford in the early nineteenth century and continued by Flora Thompson with Lark Rise at the end of the nineteenth and the very beginnings of the twentieth century. The tittle-tattle and petty politics of village life after the second world war are deliciously documented.

The residents of Cranford worried over the new railway altering their way of life, so too, the residents of Fairacre worry that the new housing estate will alter theirs.

Did the Golden Days of Miss Read's books really exist? Probably not but it is perhaps our desire to believe that they did that has driven the immense popularity of the stories as we search for those gentle times.

Helen Beatrix Potter was born in London in 1866. Her parents were prosperous but severe and Beatrix had a lonely childhood until the birth of her brother Bertram five years later.

The highlights of her early years were annual trips to Scotland and the Lake District where her eyes were first opened to the beauty of the natural world. Beatrix collected every flower, insect or animal she could find. She often returned home laden with concealed toadstools, snakeskins, beetles, even dead hedgehogs and birds! The living creatures she collected would be housed in boxes and tins, the dead ones skinned and boiled so she could study their anatomy.

She drew everything - pressed flowers, fungi, skeletons of field mice, snails reared in a flower pot and mice in a cardboard box. She kept a rabbit who spent most of his time curled up in front of the fire, a parrot cage full of bats and a hedgehog named Tiggy who drank from a dolls' cup! Her study of botany and biology was such that, had she not become a writer she would most likely have been an eminent scientist.

Everybody has heard of "The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe". But what though of the other 6 books which make up The Chronicles of Narnia?

I for one have only ever read "The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe" which I thoroughly enjoyed. But having heard so many good things about the rest of the series I was compelled to do a little research into the stories and find out some more about the author as well.

Clive Staples Lewis (or Jack Lewis as he liked to be called) was born in Belfast, Northern Ireland, in November 1898. He was the second born to Albert James Lewis (1863-1929) and Flora Augusta Hamilton Lewis (1862-1908). His older brother Warren was born in June 1895. Lewis enjoyed a pleasant early childhood spent in their family home. Unfortunately this happy time was soon to end when his mother became ill and died of cancer in 1908.

Whilst there is one obvious advantage to 'working' in a bookshop, here at Tintern we have another. The River Wye flows past the shop just a roads width away. At high tide, for the tide has an average rise and fall of approximately 20 feet, the water appears to be an extension of the road and sometimes the road an extension of the river, which makes for an interesting and varied life.

The river is tidal up as far as Brockweir, about a mile away. It was at this point that they used to embark the prisoners who were to be transported to Australia.

The village of Brockweir appears very quiet and sleepy, a place that time could be said to have passed by. It is difficult to imagine that in the first half of the twentieth century it was as famous as the fictional Ambridge (home of BBC Radio 4's Archer family) is today. Brockweir was where Flora Klickmann wrote the 'Flower Patch' stories.

The Livestock Guarding Dog is a member of the pastoral breed of dogs, but unlike many dogs in this group, it doesn’t do any herding!

Its main role is to protect the herd or flock from predators and they do this by becoming a member of the herd or flock itself. They are able to do this as they are bonded to the herd from an early age and watch for predators from within the group.

Many of the Livestock Guarding dogs today can trace their ancestry back to the Guardian dogs of the ancient Greek tribe of Molossians whose dogs were used to watch over their animals and livestock.

A child of the Raj, a prolific author who received the Nobel Prize for Literature, and whose face appeared on the cover of Time magazine. Of course, we are talking about Joseph Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936) whose work may have divided opinions but has remained hugely significant.

Born in Bombay, Kipling spent his earliest years surrounded by the exotic sights and sounds of the Raj, enjoying visits to crowded bazaars and listening to Indian nursery rhymes. This idyllic life was to come to an end at the age of five when his parents sent him, together with his younger sister, to be educated in England. Living with an adoptive couple, Captain Holloway and his wife, it was a deeply unhappy time for Kipling who missed the excitement of Indian culture. He was cruelly treated by Holloway's wife in particular, and he later referred to the place as the 'House of Desolation'.

Charles Kingsley - poet, novelist, priest, scientist, political, social and literary critic - was one of the Victorian age's most prolific authors. He was born on 12th July, 1819 to Mary Lucas Kingsley and Charles Kingsley Senior at Holne Vicarage near Dartmoor, Devonshire, England. His school years were spent at Helston Grammar School in Cornwall where the headmaster was the Reverend Derwent Coleridge, son of Samuel Taylor Coleridge. During this time he showed a great interest in art, botany and geology and wrote much poetry. After studying at King's College, London and Magdalene College, Cambridge, he graduated with a first class degree in classics and a second in mathematics.

On July 6th, 1839 Charles met and fell in love with Frances Grenfell (Fanny), the daughter of a prosperous family and several years older than him. In 1842, Charles Kingsley left Cambridge to read for Holy Orders and in July of that year he became curate of Eversley Church in Hampshire, where he was to serve for the rest of his life, working feverishly to improve the appalling physical, social and educational conditions of his parishioners. He and Fanny were married in January 1844 and in May his extensive work as curate was rewarded when he was appointed rector of Eversley Church.

Psst!… Have you heard the one about the scarecrow who was awarded a Nobel Prize? He was outstanding in his field.

Laughter is universal but we all have a particular brand of humour that we individually find irresistible. If an author can use his own experiences and channel them into your humorous vein then he is onto a winner.

One such author was W(illiam) W(ymark) Jacobs

He was born in 1863. The son of a wharf manager, the family lived on the wharf at Wapping in cramped and crowded conditions. They were always hard up and the area was hardly desirable. Holidays were taken in Sevenoaks and East Anglia and provided the only relief to this rather depressing life. The early days spent with the characters that inhabited these areas provided him with a rich source of inspiration to fuel an output of some 270 short stories and articles (many appearing in 12 Books of short stories), 5 novels and a novella; nearly all of which were hugely successful.

The first I heard about books by Shirley Hughes was whilst working at Stella Books. Some years ago, an Irish lady who also worked here got very excited about a new book by Shirley Hughes that had come into stock. She read us extracts from the book and we all admired the beautiful illustrations. She related that she used to read the books to her children when they were young and had never forgotten them. Since that time, Shirley Hughes's stories and illustrations have been a firm favourite here at Stella Books.

Shirley Hughes was born July 16th 1927. She was raised in West Kirby, a sleepy seaside town on the Wirral. Growing up in an era without television, Hughes and her sisters amused themselves listening to the wireless, dressing up and acting out plays, reading and of course drawing. Among the books that influenced her early life were the wonderfully illustrated classics by such artists as Arthur Rackham and W. Heath Robinson.

Aubrey Hopwood was involved with the famous names of the Edwardian musical comedy craze and also wrote nonsense books for children. Known as an adult as Aubrey, Henry Aubrey Hopwood was the second son of John Turner Hopwood of Blackburn in Lancashire and his wife Mary Augusta Henrietta (née Coventry). He was born in Charlotte Square, Edinburgh while his father was still MP for Clitheroe in Lancashire. His father's money came from the cotton trade and his mother's Coventry and Dundas connections linked him distantly to the peerage. One of nine children Aubrey was educated at Cheam School and at Charterhouse. His father kept a house at Rutland Gate in Kensington, London and later bought Ketton Hall in Rutland where he moved in a large musical organ. The family seem to have had a strong interest in music and in poetry with a younger brother, Ronald, finding fame in 1916 with poems with a naval theme including The Laws of the Navy.

Jane Hissey has become known to children throughout the world as creator of the stories about Old Bear and his friends. Both Jane and Old Bear are around fifty years old - he was given to her when she was a baby. The other toy characters she has collected over the years. Bramwell Brown was made for her son Owen who is now 22. Rabbit was bought in an Oxfam shop in Brighton for the princely sum of five pence - and Jane wondered at the time if he was worth it! Little Bear also belonged to Owen - being little he is very mischievous and loves falling off things! Hoot the Owl was made by Jane when she decided she wanted to do an Owl story and didn't have one.