Pat Barr (25 April 1934 – 20 March 2018) was a British novelist, writer of social history and journalist. She was born in

Norwich Norwich () is a cathedral city and district of Norfolk, England, of which it is the county town. Norwich is by the River Wensum, about north-east of London, north of Ipswich and east of Peterborough. As the seat of the See of Norwich, with ...

, attended

Norwich High School for Girls Norwich High School for Girls is an independent day school for girls aged 3 to 18 in Norwich, England. The school was founded in 1875 by the Girls’ Public Day School Company (now the Girls' Day School Trust), which aimed to establish schools ...

and studied English at the

University of Birmingham , mottoeng = Through efforts to heights , established = 1825 – Birmingham School of Medicine and Surgery1836 – Birmingham Royal School of Medicine and Surgery1843 – Queen's College1875 – Mason Science College1898 – Mason Univers ...

. She worked as a teacher at Yokohama International School in Japan. She also studied for a master's degree from

University College London , mottoeng = Let all come who by merit deserve the most reward , established = , type = Public research university , endowment = £143 million (2020) , budget = ...

Career

In the 1960s Barr was Assistant Secretary of the National Old People's Welfare Council. In this role she wrote ''The Elderly: Handbook on Care and Services'' (1968), and edited a book of older people's memories of their childhoods, ''I Remember: An Arrangement for Many Voices'' (1970). Barr's history books include: * ''The Coming of the Barbarians: A Story of Western Settlement in Japan, 1853-1870'' (1967) * ''The Deer Cry Pavilion: A Story of Westerners in Japan, 1868–1905'' (1988) * ''A Curious Life for a Lady: The Story of Isabella Bird, A Remarkable Victorian Traveller'' (1970) * ''Foreign Devils: Westerners in the Far East, the Sixteenth Century to the Present Day'' (1970) * ''To China With Love: The Lives and Times of Protestant Missionaries in China 1860-1900'' (1972) * ''The Memsahibs: The Women of Victorian India'' (1976) * ''Taming the Jungle: The Men Who Made British Malaya'' (1977) * ''The Dust in the Balance: British Women in India, 1905-1945'' (1989) Her first novel, written jointly with her husband John Barr under the pen name Laurence Hazard, was ''The Andean Murders'' (1960). Her other novels include: * ''Chinese Alice'' (1981) (American title: ''Jade'') * ''Uncut Jade'' (1983) * ''Kenjiro: A Novel of Nineteenth-Century Japan'' (1985) * ''Coromandel'' (1988) Four of her novels were bestsellers. Barr was active as a feminist and as a member of th
Women in Media group
She contributed a chapter, "Newspapers", to ''Is This Your Life?: Images of Women in the Media'' (1977), and wrote ''The Framing of the Female'' (1978). She also wrote for the feminist magazine ''

Spare Rib ''Spare Rib'' was a second-wave feminist magazine, founded in 1972 in the United Kingdom, that emerged from the counter culture of the late 1960s as a consequence of meetings involving, among others, Rosie Boycott and Marsha Rowe. ''Spare Rib' ...

''. Barr died in Norwich in 2018.

Career

References

Further reading