Name Hester Burton Role Writer | Awards Carnegie Medal | |
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Died September 17, 2000, Oxford, United Kingdom Books In spite of all terror, Time of Trial, Castors away | ||
Hester Burton (6 December 1913 – 17 September 2000) was an English writer, mainly of historical fiction for children and young adults. She received the Carnegie Medal for her 1963 novel Time of Trial. Many of her books, including Time of Trial were illustrated by Victor Ambrus. Her principal publisher was the Oxford University Press.
Biography
Burton was born Hester Wood-Hill in Beccles, Suffolk, on 6 December 1913. From 1925 to 1936 she was educated at Headington School and St Anne's College, Oxford, where she received an honours degree in English. In 1937, she married Reginald W.B. Burton, a Classics don at Oriel College.
She worked for the Oxford University Press from 1956 to 1964, contributing two volumes to the Oxford Sheldonian English Series for secondary schoolchildren—Coleridge and the Wordsworths, 1953, and Tennyson, 1954—and working as an assistant editor in the revision of the Oxford Junior Encyclopaedia. She also edited two anthologies, A Book of Modern Stories (1959) and Her First Ball (1959).
Burton's historical fiction tended to share the radical and liberal perspective popularised by Geoffrey Trease. Many of her books are set in her home county of Suffolk and many show a particular interest in the sea.
Burton died in Oxford following a stroke at age 86, on 17 September 2000.