Pen name Dorothy Whipple Genre Popular fiction Name Dorothy Whipple | Nationality English Role Writer Period 20th century | |
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Books Someone at a Distance, High wages, Greenbanks, They Were Sisters, The Priory |
Dorothy Whipple (née Stirrup) (26 February 1893 in Blackburn, Lancashire – 14 September 1966, Blackburn, Lancashire) was an English writer of popular fiction and children's books.

Overview

Described as the "Jane Austen of the 20th Century" by J. B. Priestley, her work enjoyed a period of great popularity between the wars, two of her novels being made into feature films, They Were Sisters (1945) and They Knew Mr. Knight (1946). While the popularity of her work declined in the 1950s, it has seen a recent revival; six of her novels have recently been republished by Persephone Books. A volume of her collected short stories was published in October 2007. Five of these were broadcast as The Afternoon Reading on BBC Radio 4. After the death of her husband in 1958, Dorothy Whipple returned to Blackburn, where she died in 1966.


