An Island in a Green Sea by Mabel Esther Allan

She also wrote under the pen-names Priscilla Hagon and Anne Pilgrim. She wrote for various ages and her books did not follow a 'settled pattern.' Her ballet stories include the Drina series and the Ballet Family series written under the pen-name Jean Estoril. Her books include adventure stories, mysteries, stories about families and local communities, school stories and ballet stories. Her schools, significantly, were co-educational. Neill, founder of an educational philosophy which promoted freedom and self-discipline in childhood. Work Īlthough like many authors of the era, Allan often used the school book genre, she was a proponent of A.S. 'It was the basis of all my writing', she commented in a 2006 foreword to Chiltern Adventure. Montgomery's characters, she began her writing her books with a 'Flash': a sense of possessing a landscape for a story. In 1945 she sent the manuscript of The Glen Castle Mystery to her publisher, and this first book was published in 1948.

Allan served in the Women's Land Army and taught at a crowded school in Liverpool. She published a few short stories in the 1930s, and had longer submissions accepted, but her activities were interrupted by the Second World War. Her eyesight was the reason she disliked school. It was such a taboo subject that she never discussed it with anyone until she was almost thirty, when it spontaneously improved. Her eyesight was poor, which her parents 'took.very badly and wrongly'. When the family moved, Allan was given a study in which to write. She decided to be an author at the age of eight her father bought her a writing desk and taught her how to type.

Mabel Esther Allan was born at Wallasey on the Wirral Peninsula, then in Cheshire (now Merseyside). Mabel Esther Allan (11 February 1915 – ) was a British author of about 170 children's books. Jean Estoril, Priscilla Hagon, Anne PilgrimĬhildren's novels: school stories, ballet storiesĭundonay House series, Wood Street series, Pine Street series, Crumble Lane series, Drina series

An Island in a Green Sea by Mabel Esther Allan