Name William Mayne | Role Writer | |
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Books A Grass Rope, A swarm in May, The book of Hob stories, A game of dark, Cradlefasts Similar People Nicola Bayley, Eleanor Farjeon, Anthony Lewis, Andrew Carnegie | ||
William James Carter Mayne (16 March 1928 – 24 March 2010) was an English writer of children's fiction. The first novel he published was in 1957, named "The Grass Rope". The Oxford Companion to Children's Literature calls him one of the outstanding children's authors of the 20th century. The Times Literary Supplement reportedly called him "the most original good writer for young people in our time". The contemporary children's author Aidan Chambers calls him "notoriously little read by children and much read by adults", essentially an observer and watcher. The Guardian Children's Book Editor Julia Eccleshare calls him "one of the most highly regarded writers" and influential although "sometimes thought of as inaccessible for his young readers". He once said, "All I am doing is looking at things now and showing them to myself when young."
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Life
Mayne was born in Hull, the son of a doctor. He attended school until the age of 17 but "the only part of his education he valued" was five years at the choir school attached to Canterbury Cathedral; those experiences were the foundation for his Choir School series of four novels. The school was evacuated during World War II from Kent to Cornwall. He lived for most of his life in North Yorkshire.
In 2004 he was imprisoned for two and a half years and placed on the British sex offenders registry for life after admitting sexual abuse of "young girl fans" (11 indecent assaults). According to The Guardian, the prosecutor "said Mayne had treated young visitors as adults". He was also described in the courtroom as "the greatest living writer of children's books in English". According to Eccleshare, "Mayne's books were largely deliberately removed from shelves from 2004 onwards", after his conviction.
He was found dead at his home in Thornton Rust, North Yorkshire, on the morning of 24 March 2010.
Writer
Mayne wrote more than a hundred books including the Choir School quartet comprising A Swarm in May, Choristers' Cake, Cathedral Wednesday and Words and Music (1955–1963) and the Earthfasts trilogy comprising Earthfasts, Cradlefasts and Candlefasts (1966–2000), an unusual evocation of the King Arthur legend.
For A Grass Rope he won the 1957 Carnegie Medal from the Library Association, recognising the year's best children's book by a British subject. He was also a commended runner up for the Medal five times — twice in competition with himself — for A Swarm in May (1955), Choristers' Cake (1956), Member for the Marsh (1956), Blue Boat (1957), and Ravensgill (1970). Finally he won the 1993 Guardian Children's Fiction Prize for Low Tide, a once-in-a-lifetime book award established in 1966, judged by a panel of British children's writers.
A Swarm in May was adapted as a feature film by the Children's Film Unit in 1983 and a five-part television series of Earthfasts was broadcast by the BBC in 1994.