Uttley later settled in Beaconsfield, in a house named Thackers after the house in the book. Based on the Babington Plot of Anthony Babington at Dethick, near her family home, this romance mixes dream and historical fact in a story of a 20th-century girl transported to the 16th century, becoming involved in a plot to free Mary, Queen of Scots from nearby Wingfield Manor. One of her most popular works is A Traveller in Time (1939). She later wrote for older children and adults, particularly focusing on rural topics, notably in The Country Child (1931), a fictionalized account of childhood experiences at her family farm home, Castle Top Farm, near Cromford. Her first books were a series of tales about animals, including Little Grey Rabbit, the Little Red Fox, Sam Pig and Hare. Uttley recorded that one inspiration was a meeting in 1927 with Professor Alexander at a painting exhibition in Altrincham, at which he confused her with another ex-student and asked if she was still writing. In later life Uttley said that she began writing to support herself and her son financially after she was widowed, but in fact her first book was published in 1929, before her husband's death. She also hated her own illustrator, Margaret Tempest. In 1938 she moved to Beaconsfield, where she was a neighbour of Enid Blyton, whom she came to dislike, describing her as a boastful and "vulgar, curled woman". įrom 1924 to 1938, the Uttleys lived at Downs House, 13 Higher Downs, Bowdon, Cheshire, which now has a blue plaque commemorating them. In 1978, two years after his mother's death, John Corin Taylor, too, killed himself by driving over a cliff.
James Uttley was prone to depression and drowned himself in the River Mersey in 1930. In 1914 she had her only child, John Corin Taylor, who later married and became a public schoolmaster.
Around 1910 she was living at The Old Vicarage, King Street, Knutsford. Īfter university, Alison Taylor trained as a teacher at the Cambridge Training College for Women (now Hughes Hall, Cambridge) and in 1908 became a physics teacher at Fulham Secondary School for Girls in West London. In 1906 she became the second woman honours graduate of the university and made a lifetime friendship with the charismatic Professor Samuel Alexander.
She is also remembered for a pioneering time slip novel for children, A Traveller in Time, about the imprisoned Mary, Queen of Scots.īorn in Cromford and brought up in rural Derbyshire, Alison Uttley was educated at the Lea School in Holloway and the Lady Manners School in Bakewell, where she developed a love for science that led to a scholarship to Manchester University to read physics. She is best known for a children's series about Little Grey Rabbit and Sam Pig. Honorary Doctor of Letters, Manchester UniversityĪlison Uttley (17 December 1884 – ), née Alice Jane Taylor, was an English writer of over 100 books.
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