Gertrude Minnie Faulding (1875 – 26 December 1961) was an English children's writer and novelist born in London. She collaborated with Lucy Hanson Dale, a writer of history textbooks, on "two novels of romance and marriage with unusually independent heroines".Virginia Blain, Patricia Clements and Isobel Grundy: ''The Feminist Companion to Literature in English. Women Writers from the Middle Ages to the Present'' (

Batsford Batsford is a village and civil parish in the Cotswold district of Gloucestershire, England. The village is about 1½ miles north-west of Moreton-in-Marsh. There is a falconry centre close to the village and Batsford Arboretum is nearby, ...

: London, 1990), p. 359.

Life

London-born Gertrude Minnie Faulding was schooled in Switzerland and Germany, and then read modern languages at

Somerville College, Oxford Somerville College, a constituent college of the University of Oxford in England, was founded in 1879 as Somerville Hall, one of its first two women's colleges. Among its alumnae have been Margaret Thatcher, Indira Gandhi, Dorothy Hodgkin, Ir ...

. She later worked as a language coach alongside her writing. Little else is known of her private life.

Works

Faulding had two children's books of illustrated fantasies published: ''Old Man's Beard and Other Tales'' and a book of verse entitled ''Nature Children. A Flower Book for Little Folks''.British Library. Retrieved 23 October 2018.
/ref> She followed these with ''Fairies'' (Fellowship Books, 1913), a short study of magicality in such tales, which was reprinted by Dodo Press (London, 2009). In it she put forward the idea that "belief

fairies A fairy (also fay, fae, fey, fair folk, or faerie) is a type of mythical being or legendary creature found in the folklore of multiple European cultures (including Celtic, Slavic, Germanic, English, and French folklore), a form of spirit, o ...

] is with most of us like a little plant, open to the morning sun, shivering gaily in the winds of life; scorched some times, and sometimes almost uprooted and vanishing away; yet ready always to blossom again at the stirring of ecstasy or the breath of an enchanted air." Faulding's two novels were co-written with another Somerville graduate, Lucy Dale. ''Time's Wallet'' (1913) consists of letters between Somerville graduates who are working in the

East End of London The East End of London, often referred to within the London area simply as the East End, is the historic core of wider East London, east of the Roman and medieval walls of the City of London and north of the River Thames. It does not have uni ...

. One of them breaks off her engagement rather than ceasing to think for herself. ''Merely Players'' (1917) follows an unconventional playwright through the break-up of her marriage to a civil servant. The protagonists in both can be seen as unusually independent heroines.Author and Book. Retrieved 23 October 2018.
/ref>

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Faulding, Gertrude Minnie 1875 births 1961 deaths Alumni of Somerville College, Oxford English children's writers 20th-century English novelists English women novelists 20th-century English poets English women poets Writers from London 20th-century English women writers