Jacqueline Wilson

Life and career

Jacqueline Wilson was born in Bath, Somerset, in 1945. Her father was a civil servant; her mother was an antiques dealer. Jacqueline spent most of her childhood in Kingston upon Thames, where she went to Latchmere Primary School. She particularly enjoyed books by Noel Streatfeild, as well as American classics like Little Women and What Katy Did. As early as aged seven, she filled Woolworths notebooks with stories of her imaginary games. At the age of nine she wrote her first "novel" which was 21 sides long. That story, Meet the Maggots, was about a family with seven children. Although she was good at English, she had no interest in mathematics; she would often stare out of the window and imagine rather than pay attention to the class, leading her final-year teacher at Latchmere to nickname her "Jacky Daydream". Jacqueline Wilson later used the nickname as the title of the first stage of her autobiography.

After Latchmere, she attended Coombe Girls' School, which she still visits regularly. A lecture hall at Kingston University's Penrhyn Road campus has been named after her. After leaving school at age 16, she began training as a secretary but then applied to work with the Dundee-based publishing company DC Thomson on a new girls' magazine, Jackie. DC Thomson offered the 17-year-old a job after she penned a piece on the horrors of teen discos. She fell in love with a printer named Millar Wilson. When he joined the police force, the couple moved south for his work, marrying in 1965 when Jackie was 19. Two years later, they had a daughter, Emma. They divorced in 2004.

When Wilson focused on writing, she completed a few crime fiction novels before dedicating herself to children's books. At the age of 40, she took A-level English and earned a grade A. She had mixed success with about 40 books before the breakthrough to fame in 1991 with The Story of Tracy Beaker, published by Doubleday.

Two decades later, Wilson lives in a Victorian villa in Kingston upon Thames. It is filled with books; her library of some 15,000 books extends into the outbuilding at the bottom of her garden. She remains a keen reader, completing a book a week despite her hectic schedule. Her favourite writers for adults include Katherine Mansfield and Sylvia Plath. She also surrounds herself with old-fashioned childhood objects such as a rocking horse and antique dolls, and has a unique taste in clothes and jewellery, being known for wearing black clothes and an array of large rings.

Wilson is patron of the charity Momentum in Kingston upon Thames, which helps Surrey children undergoing treatment for cancer (and their families), and she is also patron of The Friends of Richmond Park. In 2007 Wilson became a patron of the Letterbox Club, a Booktrust

In June 2013, Wilson was appointed Professorial Fellow of the University of Roehampton, where she is now a Pro-Chancellor. She teaches modules in both the Children's Literature and Creative Writing master's degree (MA) programs offered by the university.

In February 2014 it was announced that she will be appointed Chancellor of the University from August 2014.

Reception

In "The Big Read", a 2003 poll conducted by the BBC, four of Wilson's books were ranked among the 100 most popular books in Britain: Double Act, Girls In Love, Vicky Angel, and The Story of Tracy Beaker. Fourteen books by Wilson ranked in the top 200. In 2002 she replaced Catherine Cookson as the most borrowed author in Britain's libraries, a position she retained until being overtaken by James Patterson in 2008.

Awards and honours

Wilson has won many awards including the Smarties Prize and the Guardian Children's Fiction Prize. The Illustrated Mum (1999) won the annual Guardian Prize, a once-in-a-lifetime book award judged by a panel of British children's writers, and the annual British Book Awards Children's Book of the Year; it also made the 1999 Whitbread Awards shortlist. The Story of Tracy Beaker won the 2002 Blue Peter People's Choice Award. Girls in Tears was the Children's Book of the Year at the 2003 British Book Awards.

Two of her books were "Highly Commended" runners-up for the annual Carnegie Medal: The Story of Tracy Beaker (1991) and Double Act (1995). (Wilson has not won the annual Medal from British librarians, which recognises the year's best book for children or young adults written by a British subject; recently, simply the best published in the U.K.)

In June 2002, Wilson was appointed an OBE for services to literacy in schools and from 2005 to 2007 she served as the fourth Children's Laureate. In that role Wilson urged parents and child-care providers to continue reading aloud to children long after they are able to read for themselves. She also campaigned to make more books available for blind people and campaigned against cutbacks in children's TV drama.

In October 2005 she received an honorary degree from the University of Winchester in recognition of her achievements in and on behalf of children's literature. In July 2007 the University of Roehampton awarded her an Honorary Doctorate (Doctor of Letters) in recognition of her achievements in and on behalf of children's literature. She has also received honorary degrees from the University of Dundee, the University of Bath and Kingston University.

In the 2008 New Year Honours, Wilson was appointed Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE).

In July 2012, Dame Jacqueline was also elected an Honorary Fellow of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge.

Adaptations

A dramatisation of Wilson's Double Act, written and directed by Vicky Ireland, was first performed at The Polka Theatre in Wimbledon, London from 30 January to 12 April 2003, and toured throughout the UK. The playscript was published by Collins Plays Plus. Ireland has also written dramatisations of The Lottie Project (performed at Polka Theatre and San Pol Theatre, Madrid), Midnight, Bad Girls and Secrets, which were also commissioned by the Polka Theatre, and a dramatisation of The Suitcase Kid which was performed at the Orange Tree Theatre, Richmond and later toured throughout the UK. The scripts for these plays were published by Nick Hern Books.

The following books by Wilson have been adapted for TV:

Books

All of Wilson's books are fiction except the three autobiographies listed here.

Biography