Violet Methley
Violet M. Methley (1882 – 1953) was an English writer of children’s adventure novels, short stories, and drama. Notable themes in her works are:
- Biography. Methley was the author of Camille Desmoulins: A Biography (1915) and gave a 'Biography of Boots and Shoes' on Radio 4 in 1924.[1]
- Drama. Methley wrote plays for young children to act out[2] and a guide to drama (Amateur Actor's Companion, 1915), noting that 'We are very far removed now from the century-old days when Jane Austen's heroine considered it grossly indecent and immodest for young ladies to dream of acting a play with a love-scene.'[3]
- Australia. It is speculated that Methley spent time living in Australia as many of her stories feature Australia or Australian people. For example, 'The Bunyip Patrol' (1926) features a patrol of schoolgirls who attempt to track down the creature of Aboriginal legend, the bunyip.[4]
- Horror. Methley is noted as an early woman writer of science fiction and horror.[5] Some of her stories ('Dread at Darracombe', 1930 and 'The Milk Carts', 1932) appear in Weird Tales under her own name.[6]
- WWII. 'The Vackies' (1941) follows a family of evacuated children and picks up on the themes of evacuated children’s attachment to animals.[7][8]
Select works
[edit]- Fourteen Fourteens (1900)
- Camille Desmoulins: A Biography (1914)
- Girl Friday (1928)
- The Windmill Guides (1930)
- The Queer Island (1934)
- Seeing the Empire (1935)
- Cocky and Co. and Their Adventures (1937)
- Dragon Island: An Adventure Story for Girls (1938)
- Mystery Camp (1940)
- Lydia Gaff (1941)
- Great Galleon (1942)
- Derry Down-Under: A Story of Adventure in Australia (1943)
- Two in the Bush (1945)
- Georgie and the Dragon (1950)
- Armada Ahoy! (1953)
References
[edit]- ^ Bradford, Richard (2018-11-28). A Companion to Literary Biography. John Wiley & Sons. p. 88. ISBN 978-1-118-89629-7.
- ^ May, Helen; Nawrotzki, Kristen; Prochner, Larry (2018-05-31). Kindergarten Narratives on Froebelian Education: Transnational Investigations. Bloomsbury Academic. ISBN 978-1-350-06993-0.
- ^ Meeuwis, Michael (2019). Everyone's Theater: Literature and Daily Life in England, 1860-1914. University of Michigan Press. p. 92. ISBN 978-0-472-13147-1.
- ^ Holden, Robert; Holden, Nicholas (2001). Bunyips: Australia's Folklore of Fear. National Library Australia. p. 165. ISBN 978-0-642-10732-9.
- ^ Davin, Eric Leif (2006). Partners in Wonder: Women and the Birth of Science Fiction, 1926-1965. Lexington Books. p. 66. ISBN 978-0-7391-1267-0.
- ^ Howlett, Mike (2010-11-30). The Weird World of Eerie Publications: Comic Gore That Warped Millions of Young Minds. Feral House. ISBN 978-1-936239-21-4.
- ^ Andrews, Maggie (2019-08-08). Women and Evacuation in the Second World War: Femininity, Domesticity and Motherhood. Bloomsbury Academic. p. 163. ISBN 978-1-4411-4068-5.
- ^ Edwards, Owen Dudley (2007-08-01). British Children's Fiction in the Second World War. Edinburgh University Press. p. 149. ISBN 978-0-7486-2872-8.