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Mabel Esther Allan (11 February 1915 - 14 May 1998)
The following biographical note relies on information from the MAE Papers and from notes from dust jackets.
Biography
Mabel was an incredibly prolific writer, publishing some 180 books and contributing over 300 short stories and articles to annuals and magazines, both under her own name and the pseudonyms of Jean Estoril, Priscilla Hagon and Anne Pilgrim.
Mabel Esther Allan was born in Wallasey, Cheshire, England, on February 11, 1915, to James Pemberton Allan, a merchant, and his wife, Priscilla Hagon Allan. Educated at disappointing dame schools, Allan took no interest in her lessons but enjoyed only reading in the library and composing short stories and novels.
Because of poor eyesight due to congenital retinal problems she was considered stupid at the private schools where she was educated. She was partly of Scottish descent and took pride in that. Loving school stories, she longed to attend boarding school, but as an adult realised that she would not have liked the lack of privacy. At the age of eight, she announced to her family that she planned to be a writer and wrote a story called ‘The Bravest Girl in the School’ which she said was a crib from other school stories. Her family took her ambition seriously and when they moved a few years later Mabel was given a spare room to use as a study. Her father bought a large office desk which she was to use for the rest of her life, and presented her with a typewriter upon which she taught herself to type.
She also learned ballet but her eyesight prevented her excelling at this so she used her experiences to write the Drina and Ballet Family books instead.
Although Mabel had a number of short stories published during the 1930s and had a couple of books accepted by publishers, the war intervened. Mabel joined the land army, and taught in a prep school and in a nursery in a slum area of Liverpool where she taught 48 two to five year-olds at a time.
After completing her education in 1932, Allan taught folk dancing classes for the English Folk Dance and Song Society while submitting stories and novels for publication. She failed to publish any adult pieces, but found unexpected success at selling short stories for children. She sold her first book for publication, Grim Glen Castle, in 1939, but it was not published because of the outbreak of war. During World War II, Allan served as a farm worker in the Women's Land Army, a teacher in a preparatory school, and a nursery warden for the children of factory workers.
Allan submitted Grim Glen Castle to another publisher in the spring of 1945. It was published in 1948 as The Glen Castle Mystery. Deciding to commit herself to writing for children, she wrote her second published novel, The Adventurous Summer, in the autumn of 1945. Over the subsequent twenty-five years, Allan produced an abundant number of novels. She wrote adventures, mysteries, and romances for older girls, all following conventional attitudes and subject matters. The only exception to her conformity appeared in her school stories, which embraced progressive educational tenets like coeducation, student self-discipline, and schoolchildren's participation in running their schools. Allan also sold about 330 short stories between 1936 and 1957.
In 1945 while living in Heswall her eyesight apparently improved (largely unexplained)
She first traveled abroad in 1948, beginning a practice that contributed heavily to her writing by providing new settings and experiences to use in her novels. Mabel Esther Allan had a special fondness for New York, Paris, and the Celtic areas of the British Isles.
During the decade of the 1960s, she became established as a top-selling children's writer. She especially became known for her series of Drina books. Written under the pseudonym Jean Estoril, the eleven volumes follow a young dancer from her schooling to her becoming an internationally famous ballerina. Allan also published under the pseudonyms of Priscilla Hagon, Anne Pilgrim, and Kathleen M. Pearcey.
Her writing changed in the 1970s with a new focus on religious disbelief, familial dysfunction, sexual feelings in young people, and the women's suffrage movement in the early twentieth century. During the 1980s, Allan had a series of fiction and non-fiction works privately printed. She composed an informal autobiography in two volumes, while other books recounted her travel experiences and published some of her early poetry and school stories. She published over 170 books for children and young adults over her literary career.
Towards the end of her life however she became incapacitated by blindness, arthritis and trigeminal neuralgia. She died only a few weeks after going into a nursing home in 1998.
Biographical information from dust jackets
From DJ of Behind the Blue Gates
Mabel Esther Allan decided to be a writer at the age of eight. Before she left school she had written two full-length books though these were never published. For many years now she has been one of Britain’s most prolific and successful novelists for the young. She loves travel and Paris is just one of the great cities of the world which she has enjoyed exploring.From DJ of Bridge of Friendship 1975
Mabel Esther Allan lives in Cheshire, but during the past fifteen years she has spent much time in New York City. She knows Manhattan intimately and loves it. Bridge of Friendship is the ninth book she has set in Manhattan, but she has written about many other places, including a large number of stories set in Scotland. Her previous book for Dent An Island in a Green Sea describes life in the Outer Hebrides during the 1920s. This was an Honor Book in the Boston Globe-Horn Book awards in 1973.From DJ of Time to go Back 1972
I started writing when I was eight, and I sold my first short story at nineteen. But it was many years – and a long struggle – after that before I succeeded in selling a book. I’ve made up for it since, though, for I have now had one hundred and twelve published.Time to Go Back is not really in the least like any of the others. I wanted to do something quite different, so I have gone back to the bombing of Merseyside. The story is not autobiographical, though there are strong elements of truth. I really did live in Wallasey at that time, at 4 The Willow (a house mentioned in the book), and later left the ruined street to live in Plymyard Avenue, Bromborough … just like the Ellesmeres. And, like Lark, I wrote in the air raid shelter when the bombs were falling, and her poems are my poems; the ones I wrote then.
For part of the Second World War I was in the Women’s Land Army, and later I was Warden of a Nursery attached to a Liverpool slum school. When the war was over I was able to travel to foreign countries, as well as write, and travelling has remained one of my greatest pleasures.
The de Grummond Children's Literature Collection at The University of Southern Mississippi houses the Mabel Esther Allan Papers - a collection of manuscripts, typescripts, galleys, correspondence, and personal items created and accumulated by Mabel Esther Allan between 1915 and 1998 .
The Mabel Esther Allan Papers contain manuscripts, typescripts, galleys, correspondence, photographs, programs, certificates, broadsides, publications, and catalogs created and accumulated by Mabel Esther Allan between 1915 and 1998. Allan's papers were created from her composition of twelve published books; five privately printed volumes of short stories, poems, and autobiography; and eight unpublished novels, short stories, and essays. The material is organized into three series: literary works, correspondence, and personal papers.
The papers in the literary works series are organized into four subseries: published works, privately printed works, unpublished works, and other literary material. In each of the first three subseries, the papers are arranged alphabetically by title and the material for each composition is arranged chronologically in order of creation when known. Mabel Allan frequently composed new typescripts on the reverse of typescript pages of books that already had been published; consequently, some typescripts bear fragments of the typescripts of earlier works. Allan also provided several notes explaining the origins of certain works for the benefit of the de Grummond Collection staff. Because she wrote on adhesive labels, these notes have been photocopied and filed with the appropriate pieces.
Mabel Allan's correspondence details facets of the writing, editing, and publication of around 130 books and innumerable articles and short stories. She organized her correspondence primarily by title, but sometimes sorted letters by correspondent. Her organization has been retained, but the files have been arranged chronologically by date of publication. Files created for particular correspondents have been interspersed at suitable sites in the chronology. Letters frequently refer to more than one title, so users interested in a certain book should consult both the file specific to the title as well as other files of similar date. Letters are arranged chronologically within each file with undated letters placed at the rear of the file. Prominent among the correspondents are Allan's literary agents, Innes Rose and Vanessa Holt, at John Farquharson, Ltd. Allan received letters in English, French, German, and Japanese.
The personal papers series is organized into seven subseries: autobiographical material, Gaelic interest, folk dancing, wartime and postwar service, Phyllis Eileen Williams, photographs, and correspondence with the de Grummond Children's Literature Collection. Materials that Allan accumulated from her association with the English Folk Dance and Song Society are unseparated and arranged chronologically, except for photographs. The prints, which span the years 1934-1939, are mostly undated and impossible to arrange chronologically. Materials from Allan's wartime service and postwar agricultural work, as well as her correspondence concerning Phyllis Eileen Williams, an orphan, are all arranged chronologically. Allan organized some of her photographs by subject or locale. These bundles have been retained while the remaining prints have been divided between candid photographs and portraits. All photographs are arranged roughly chronologically within their divisions. Finally, the pieces of correspondence with the de Grummond Children's Literature Collection were selected and photocopied from the correspondence file of the de Grummond Collection because they provide information on Allan's literary views and habits. They are arranged chronologically.
Fidra Books have published some of Mabel Esther Allan’s best loved books.
The first was The School on North Barrule. Subsequent titles will include Cilia of Chiltern’s Edge, Swiss School, Lost Lorrenden and Clues to Connemara.
The Fidra Books site notes that:
‘Her school stories are particularly interesting in that they are strikingly different from the typical school story of the 1950s. Heavily influenced by the writings of A S Neil, the progressive educationalist who founded Summerhill, Mabel’s schools are unconventional, teaching children self-discipline rather than relying on imposed discipline and many were coeducational. Her non-school stories were often mystery-thrillers for older children set in the places to which Mabel loved to travel: the Scottish islands, Switzerland, Wales, Ireland and New York and her descriptions of settings are evocative and detailed.’
A poem by Mabel Esther Allan about Wallasey in the Second World War
Some links to sites about Wallasey