Elfrida Vipont facts for kids
Elfrida Vipont Brown (3 July 1902 – 14 March 1992) was an English children's author born in Manchester into a family of Quakers. As a children's author, she initially published under a man's name, Charles Vipont, which was a common marketing device by publishers at the time. She later wrote as Elfrida Vipont, and after her marriage sometimes as E. V. Foulds. She was also a schoolteacher and a prominent Quaker herself.
Early life
Born in Manchester in 3 July 1902, Elfrida Brown was the youngest of the three children of Edward Vipont Brown (1863–1955), a general practitioner and Dorothy Brown (née Crowley) (1874–1968).
She was educated at Manchester High School for Girls and The Mount School, York, which were not unlike the "Chesterham High School" and "Heryot School" she portrayed in The Lark in the Morn. After a time of reading history at Manchester University, she realized that what she really wanted to sing, and went on to study it with teachers in London, Paris and Leipzig and to work as a freelance writer and lecturer.
In 1926, Vipont married R. Percy Foulds, a research technologist. They had four daughters. She started her writing career during their early years.
During World War II she was headmistress of an Evacuation School set up by Quakers in Manchester at Liverpool and Yealand Conyers, a small village in Lancashire, where children from those cities and from further afield were sent for safety, away from the wartime bombing. Three of her own daughters were pupils at the school.
Elfrida Foulds had already published three books for children before the war. After it was over she became a writer in many fields, with interests in history, Quakerism and music. She wrote nearly two dozen novels, stories and anthologies for children and young adults. The Lark in the Morn and The Lark on the Wing are among the best of many books. The Lark on the Wing won the Carnegie Medal in 1951.
Service to Quakers
Elfrida Fouldes was a lifelong member of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers). She served on the Meeting for Sufferings of London Yearly Meeting (an executive committee) from 1939 to 1985; from 1969 to 1974 she was its Clerk. She also served on the Friends Service Council, the Friends Education Council, the Library Committee and the Friends Historical Society Executive Committee. She was also a long-serving member of the Ackworth School Committee. She also served on the committee that arranged for British Quakers' Yearly Meeting, and participated in the revision of the Quaker Book of Discipline. Elfrida Foulds lived for many years at Yealand Conyers, while travelling worldwide for Quaker committees and lecturing in schools and libraries.
Writing career
Elfrida Fouldes wrote "serious books" about Quakerism, some under her married name E. V. Foulds. One was her first published book, Quakerism: An International Way of Life (1930).
She used a man's pen name, Charles Vipont, to write adventure stories for boys (first in 1939); that was a common marketing device by Oxford University Press and other publishers of female authors. The Heir of Craigs (Oxford, 1955) is a historical novel set in Britain and North America late in the 17th century. Nigel Craig, the son of an aristocratic family, "escapes" on adventure with a cousin. Along with "a band of steadfast and resourceful Quakers", they are shipwrecked in the New World and they meet hostile natives.
As "Elfrida Vipont", she wrote about two dozen books for children (and other works), including short biographies of the authors Charlotte Brontë, George Eliot, and Jane Austen, published by Hamish Hamilton between 1965 and 1977. A number of her books were published by Gazelle Books and Reindeer Books, Hamish Hamilton's imprints for younger children.
Her best-known books are The Lark in the Morn (1948) and The Lark on the Wing (1950), published by Oxford University Press. For the latter she won the annual Carnegie Medal from the Library Association, recognising the year's best children's book by a British subject. The Lark books were five family stories following the musical career of Kit Haverard. The three other novels continuing this Lark /Haverard series are The Spring of the Year (1957), Flowering Spring (1960), and The Pavilion (1969).
Fouldes and the illustrator Raymond Briggs collaborated on a picture book for young children, The Elephant and the Bad Baby, published by Hamish Hamilton in 1969. Probably it is her most famous work; by a wide margin, as it is the one most widely held in WorldCat participating libraries. It features a baby who refuses to say please and goes romping through town on the back of an elephant while being chased by various townspeople. The Elephant and the Bad Baby is a "cumulative story" with a "poetic feel", a common effect drawn from the picture-book format of the text.
Later life
Elfrida Foulds lived for many years at Yealand Conyers, Lancashire, where she was an active participant in community affairs, while travelling worldwide for Quaker committees and lecturing in schools and libraries. She died in 1992.
Legacy
Elfrida Foulds' personal papers are at the John Rylands University Library of Manchester.
