Dorothy Edwards

Who was Dorothy Edwards?

Dorothy Edwards was a British children's writer.

Born as Dorothy Violet Ellen Brown into a working-class family, her father taught her to read at an early age, enabling her to write her first story at four years of age. Her stories, poems and articles were published throughout her twenties, and at this time she married her husband Frank Edwards and had two children, Jane and Frank.

Edwards' most famous stories are of My Naughty Little Sister, which she conceived to keep her daughter, Jane, quiet whilst on a family holiday in 1950. She wrote five books of these stories.

She also published several anthologies of short stories, folklore and poetry for children, chiefly on the subjects of magic, witchcraft and ghosts. Two of these are Ghosts and Shadows 1980 and Mists and Magic 1983.

She was shortlisted for the Whitbread Award for children's literature for The Witches and the Grinnygog 1981, a novel for children about the survival of benign pagan witchcraft in modern Britain. This novel was later adapted for television.

Edwards was part of the 1950s radio show Listen with Mother, and she also wrote for Playschool and Jackanory.