Catherine Storr, Baroness Balogh (born Catherine Cole; 21 July 1913 – 8 January 2001,Eccleshare (2005) gives the date of her death as 8 January; Eccleshare (2001) and Thwaite (2001) give it as 6 January.) was an English children's writer, best known for her novel '' Marianne Dreams'' and for a series of books about a wolf ineptly pursuing a young girl, beginning with ''Clever Polly and the Stupid Wolf''. She also wrote under the name Helen Lourie.
Life
She was born in
Kensington
Kensington is a district in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea in the West End of London, West of Central London.
The district's commercial heart is Kensington High Street, running on an east–west axis. The north-east is taken up b ...
, London, one of three children of a barrister, Arthur Frederick Andrew Cole (1883–1968), and his wife, Margaret Henrietta, born Gaselee (1882–1971).Eccleshare (2005). She attended
St Paul's Girls' School
St Paul's Girls' School is an independent day school for girls, aged 11 to 18, located in Brook Green, Hammersmith, in West London, England.
History
St Paul's Girls' School was founded by the Worshipful Company of Mercers in 1904, using part o ...
, where she was taught music by
Gustav Holst
Gustav Theodore Holst (born Gustavus Theodore von Holst; 21 September 1874 – 25 May 1934) was an English composer, arranger and teacher. Best known for his orchestral suite ''The Planets'', he composed many other works across a range ...
and became the school's organist. She went on to study English literature at
Newnham College, Cambridge
Newnham College is a women's Colleges of the University of Cambridge, constituent college of the University of Cambridge.
The college was founded in 1871 by a group organising Lectures for Ladies, members of which included philosopher Henry Sid ...
, and at first pursued a career as a novelist without success. Without giving up this ambition, she studied medicine, qualifying as a doctor in 1944. From 1950 to 1963 she acted as a Senior Medical Officer in the Department of Psychological Medicine at the
Middlesex Hospital
Middlesex Hospital was a teaching hospital located in the Fitzrovia area of London, England. First opened as the Middlesex Infirmary in 1745 on Windmill Street, it was moved in 1757 to Mortimer Street where it remained until it was finally clos ...
.Thwaite (2001). Afterwards, while regularly producing children's books, she also worked as an editorial assistant for
Penguin Books
Penguin Books is a British publishing, publishing house. It was co-founded in 1935 by Allen Lane with his brothers Richard and John, as a line of the publishers The Bodley Head, only becoming a separate company the following year.
She had met the psychiatrist and author
Anthony Storr
Anthony Storr (18 May 1920 – 17 March 2001) was an English psychiatrist, psychoanalyst, and author.
Background and education
Born in London, Storr was educated at Winchester College, Christ's College, Cambridge, and Westminster Hospital. H ...
(1920–2001) during her training and married him in 1942. They had three daughters, Sophia, Polly and Emma, but divorced in 1970. She later married the economist Lord Balogh (1905–1985).
Storr continued writing novels into her eighties. She died at her London flat in January 2001.
Work
Unusually among the leading children's writers of her time, much of her work was for younger children, at the start of their reading, notably the series of stories about Polly and the wolf, which were written for her daughter, Polly. The stories, starting with the collection ''Clever Polly and the Stupid Wolf'' (1955), feature a wolf trying to catch a little girl: the wolf, himself a fairy tale figure, takes his always impractical subterfuges from fairy tales, but is outmatched by Polly every time. A novel for slightly older children ''Marianne Dreams'' (1958) is more disturbing: a young girl, being tutored at home during sickness, travels in dreams to the house she has drawn while awake and meets there another pupil of her tutor; in a moment of jealousy she draws stones with eyes around the house to keep him prisoner and must then undo her actions. It was made into the TV series '' Escape Into Night'' and the film '' Paperhouse''; Storr was not fond of the latter, and particularly disliked the ending.
Storr's books often involve confronting fears, even in the lighthearted Polly stories, and she was aware that she wrote frightening stories. On the subject, she writes: "We should show them that evil is something they already know about or half know. It's not something right outside themselves and this immediately puts it, not only into their comprehension, but it also gives them a degree of power".
She wrote two series of the ATV series ''
Starting Out
''Starting Out'' is an Australian television soap opera made for the Nine Network by the Reg Grundy Organisation in 1983.
Background
The five-night-a-week series was created by Reg Watson as the network's replacement for the long-running s ...
The Guardian
''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers ''The Observer'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the Gu ...
, 11 January 2001 (obituary).
*Julia Eccleshare, "Storr, Catherine", ''Oxford Dictionary of National Biography'', online edition, Oxford:
OUP
Oxford University Press (OUP) is the university press of the University of Oxford. It is the largest university press in the world, and its printing history dates back to the 1480s. Having been officially granted the legal right to print books ...
The Independent
''The Independent'' is a British online newspaper. It was established in 1986 as a national morning printed paper. Nicknamed the ''Indy'', it began as a broadsheet and changed to tabloid format in 2003. The last printed edition was publis ...
, 12 January 2001 (obituary).
*
John Rowe Townsend
John Rowe Townsend (19 May 1922 – 24 March 2014) was a British children's writer and children's literature scholar. His best-known children's novel is ''The Intruder'', which won a 1971 Edgar Award. His best-known academic work is a reference se ...
, ''Written for Children''. London and Harmondsworth: Penguin, ed. 3, 1987.