Barbara Euphan Todd (1890–1976)
Autor von Miss Ranskill Comes Home
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Wissenswertes
- Rechtmäßiger Name
- Todd, Barbara Euphan
Bower, Mrs John Graham (marriage)
Bower, Barbara Euphan (widow) - Andere Namen
- Euphan (pen name)
- Geburtstag
- 1890-01-09
- Todestag
- 1976-02-02
- Geschlecht
- female
- Nationalität
- UK
- Geburtsort
- Arksey, Yorkshire, England, UK
- Sterbeort
- Donnington, Berkshire, England, UK
- Wohnorte
- Soberton, Hampshire, England, UK
Surrey, England, UK
Blewbury, Berkshire, England, UK - Ausbildung
- St Catherine's School, Bramley, Surrey, England, UK
- Berufe
- children's book author
radio scriptwriter - Beziehungen
- Bower, John Graham (husband)
- Organisationen
- Voluntary Aid Detachment (WWI)
- Kurzbiographie
- Barbara Euphan Todd was born at Arksey, then in the West Riding of Yorkshire, England, the only child of a clergyman and his wife. She was educated at St. Catherine's, a boarding school in Bramley, near Guildford in Surrey. She worked as a volunteer military nurse for the VAD (Voluntary Aid Detachment) during the World War I. After her father's retirement, she lived with her parents in Surrey and began writing.
She contributed stories to magazines such as Punch and The Spectator, and wrote a volume of poems for children, Hither and Thither (1927). In 1932, she married Commander John Graham Bower, an officer in the Royal Navy, and began writing novels for children, some of them in collaboration with her husband. She wrote more than 30 books altogether, and her most popular works were 10 novels about Worzel Gummidge, a scarecrow who comes to life, beginning with Worzel Gummidge, or The Scarecrow of Scatterbrook (1936) and concluding with Detective Worzel Gummidge (1963). In the 1950s, she adapted some of her Worzel Gummidge stories as radio plays for children. A television series, Worzel Gummidge Turns Detective, was made in 1953. Her only novel for adults was Miss Ranskill Comes Home (1946).
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La señorita Ranskill vuelve a casa von Barbara Euphan Todd
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A very charming 1936 book of stories, strung together to form a light novel. As with so much fiction of the Jazz Age, it's a very concise book, easy to read and quick to finish; I ambled my way through it in a couple of sunny porch sittings. I had been familiar with the concept of Worzel Gummidge since I was a teenager because of the popular 1980s TV series, but I hadn't seen it, or read the book, until this year. Worzel never seems to have made much of an impression here in the United States.
This is at least a little bit surprising, because the basic format of Worzel - two middle-class children spend their summer holidays "keeping out of trouble" by getting into scrapes in their attempts to keep secret their acquaintance with a grumpy magical being - seems to owe more than a little to E. Nesbit, who is both known and republished in this country. Worzel, a moody scarecrow with a broad, word-mangling accent, could easily be the country cousin of Nesbit's Psammead. Todd only has two children, as opposed to Nesbit's usual five or six, but they're still running around a village putting out brush fires as Worzel, like the Psammead, misinterprets modern life and how it works. There's a bit of Richmal Crompton's Just William in here, too, with the willful (if ultimately rather gentle) upheaval of adult routine into what both series characterize as a kind of anarchy.
What's perhaps interesting is how Todd's stories work on a couple of different levels, and how the different adaptations emphasize different, equally valid, interpretations. Based on what we can tell about the early radio and TV adaptations, the many adventures of John, Susan, and Worzel were treated as gentle country stories: kindly and wholesome for small children. That is a completely valid reading; there's something very calm about Todd's prose, and the small-scale aspect of the "scrapes," that makes them perfect for bedtime. The 1980s series with Jon Pertwee, on the other hand, emphasized the juxaposition of showbiz slapstick and melancholy, focusing firmly on Worzel and going so far as to extrapolate a couple of minor Todd characters into the vicious object of his affecton, Aunt Sally, and his creator, the Crowman. This, too, is valid; the stories are quite mischievous, and making the anarchy a little more explicit helps you to feel Worzel's pathos, which is implied but rarely stated in the book, more deeply.
The most interesting moments in the book, however, are the little glimpses of the uncanny, the slightly unsettling moments you aren't sure how to take. The recent Mackenzie Crook series leans into and amplifies these. There are three or four in this first slim volume of stories, and each time, they make you pause. The meeting of scarecrows toward the end of the book is particularly strange; Todd keeps returning to the idea that scarecrows don't know how to move like humans, and they walk sideways like crabs, while one, briefly featured scarecrow rolls along with his legs made out of a milking stool. My favorite moment is when Susan witnesses Worzel enchanting the rabbits in a neighbor's garden; she thinks he must be a "wizard," but Todd's description goes beyond that: he seems to have an understanding of nature that can't be understood by you or I.
I really enjoyed getting to know Worzel Gummidge and would quite happily read another book of his stories. Reprint these in the USA!… (mehr)
This is at least a little bit surprising, because the basic format of Worzel - two middle-class children spend their summer holidays "keeping out of trouble" by getting into scrapes in their attempts to keep secret their acquaintance with a grumpy magical being - seems to owe more than a little to E. Nesbit, who is both known and republished in this country. Worzel, a moody scarecrow with a broad, word-mangling accent, could easily be the country cousin of Nesbit's Psammead. Todd only has two children, as opposed to Nesbit's usual five or six, but they're still running around a village putting out brush fires as Worzel, like the Psammead, misinterprets modern life and how it works. There's a bit of Richmal Crompton's Just William in here, too, with the willful (if ultimately rather gentle) upheaval of adult routine into what both series characterize as a kind of anarchy.
What's perhaps interesting is how Todd's stories work on a couple of different levels, and how the different adaptations emphasize different, equally valid, interpretations. Based on what we can tell about the early radio and TV adaptations, the many adventures of John, Susan, and Worzel were treated as gentle country stories: kindly and wholesome for small children. That is a completely valid reading; there's something very calm about Todd's prose, and the small-scale aspect of the "scrapes," that makes them perfect for bedtime. The 1980s series with Jon Pertwee, on the other hand, emphasized the juxaposition of showbiz slapstick and melancholy, focusing firmly on Worzel and going so far as to extrapolate a couple of minor Todd characters into the vicious object of his affecton, Aunt Sally, and his creator, the Crowman. This, too, is valid; the stories are quite mischievous, and making the anarchy a little more explicit helps you to feel Worzel's pathos, which is implied but rarely stated in the book, more deeply.
The most interesting moments in the book, however, are the little glimpses of the uncanny, the slightly unsettling moments you aren't sure how to take. The recent Mackenzie Crook series leans into and amplifies these. There are three or four in this first slim volume of stories, and each time, they make you pause. The meeting of scarecrows toward the end of the book is particularly strange; Todd keeps returning to the idea that scarecrows don't know how to move like humans, and they walk sideways like crabs, while one, briefly featured scarecrow rolls along with his legs made out of a milking stool. My favorite moment is when Susan witnesses Worzel enchanting the rabbits in a neighbor's garden; she thinks he must be a "wizard," but Todd's description goes beyond that: he seems to have an understanding of nature that can't be understood by you or I.
I really enjoyed getting to know Worzel Gummidge and would quite happily read another book of his stories. Reprint these in the USA!… (mehr)
Excellent colourful period piece cover design for a story that provides a potted history of certain places in Hampshire, Wiltshire, Berkshire, Oxfordshire with other parts of the country thrown in rather clumsily. The device used is a 'famous five' but in this case 'four' approach in the form of a family from South Africa excited about coming to England and finding more about the history of parts of southern England.
I'd completely forgotten about Worzel. I have only memories of the memory now, but as a kid loved these.
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