Eleanor Farjeon (13 February 1881 – 5 June 1965) was an English author of children's stories and plays, poetry, biography, history and satire.
Several of her works had illustrations by Edward Ardizzone. Some of her correspondence has also been published. She won many literary awards and the Eleanor Farjeon Award for children's literature is presented annually in her memory by the Children's Book Circle, a society of publishers. She was the sister of thriller writer Joseph Jefferson Farjeon and composer Harry Farjeon.
N.B.: The biographies listed under the "Bibliography" subhead below do not eliminate the need for specific citations within the article.
Eleanor Farjeon was born on 13 February 1881. Eleanor came from a literary and artistic family, prolific author Benjamin Farjeon and Maggie (Jefferson) Farjeon, the daughter of American actor-producer Joseph Jefferson. Eleanor's two younger brothers, Joseph and Herbert Farjeon, became writers, while the eldest, Harry Farjeon, became a composer.
Farjeon, known to the family as "Nellie", was a small, timid child, who had poor eyesight and suffered from ill-health including severe migraine headaches throughout her childhood. She was educated at home, spending much of her time in the attic, surrounded by books. Her father encouraged her writing from the age of five. She describes her family and her childhood in the autobiographical A Nursery in the Nineties (1935).
She and her elder brother Harry were especially close. Beginning when Farjeon was five, they began a sustained imaginative game in which they became various characters from theatrical plays and literature. This game, called T.A.R. after the initials of two of the original characters, lasted into their mid-twenties. Farjeon credited this game with giving her "the flow of ease which makes writing a delight".
Although she lived much of her life among the literary and theatrical circles of London, much of Farjeon's inspiration came from her childhood and from family holidays. A holiday in France in 1907 was to inspire her to create a story of a troubadour, later refashioned as the wandering minstrel of her most famous book, Martin Pippin in the Apple Orchard. Among her earliest publications is a volume of poems called Pan Worship, published in 1908, and Nursery Rhymes of London Town from 1916. During World War I, the family moved to Sussex where the landscape, villages and local traditions were to have a profound effect upon her later writing. It was in Sussex that the Martin Pippin stories were eventually to be located.
At eighteen, Farjeon wrote the libretto for an operetta, Floretta, to music by her brother Harry, who later became a composer and teacher of music. She also collaborated with her youngest brother, Herbert, Shakespearian scholar and dramatic critic. Their productions include Kings and Queens (1932), The Two Bouquets (1938), An Elephant in Arcady (1939), and The Glass Slipper (1944).
Farjeon had a wide range of friends with great literary talent including D. H. Lawrence, Walter de la Mare, Robert Frost and Elizabeth Myers. For several years she had a close friendship with the poet Edward Thomas and his wife. After Thomas's death in April 1917 during the Battle of Arras, she remained close to his wife, Helen. She later published much of their correspondence, and gave a definitive account of their relationship in Edward Thomas: The Last Four Years (1958).
After World War I Farjeon earned a living as a poet, journalist and broadcaster. Often published under a pseudonym, Farjeon's poems appeared in The Herald (Tomfool), Punch, Time and Tide (Chimaera), The New Leader (Merry Andrew), Reynolds News (Tomfool), and a number of other periodicals. Her topical work for The Herald, Reynolds News and New Leader was perhaps the most accomplished of any socialist poet of the 1920s and 30s.
Farjeon never married, but had a thirty-year friendship with George Earle, an English teacher. After Earle's death in 1949, she had a long friendship with the actor Denys Blakelock, who wrote of it in the book Eleanor, Portrait of a Farjeon (1966).
During the 1950s, she received three major literary awards. Both the 1955 Carnegie Medal for British children's books and the inaugural Hans Christian Andersen Medal in 1956 cited The Little Bookroom. The inaugural Regina Medal in 1959 from the U.S.-based Catholic Library Association marks her "continued, distinguished contribution to children's literature".
In 1960, Farjeon donated her family book collection to the Dunedin Public Library. Her father had been a journalist in Dunedin in the 1860s before returning to England. The collection includes works by Farjeon, her father, brothers and niece. It also includes some music, photographs and correspondence, and two pictograph letters by Nicholas Chevalier, who was a family friend and illustrated many of Benjamin Farjeon's books.
Farjeon died in Hampstead, London on 5 June 1965. She is buried in the north churchyard extension of St John-at-Hampstead.
The Children's Book Circle, a society of publishers, present the Eleanor Farjeon Award annually to individuals or organisations whose commitment and contribution to children's books is deemed to be outstanding.
Her work is cited as an influence by the Japanese animator Hayao Miyazaki. Although she entitled her 1958 book on her friendship with Edward Thomas Book One of The Memoirs of Eleanor Farjeon, and outlined the plans for subsequent volumes, she never completed this prior to her death in 1965. Her niece Annabel Farjeon (1919–2004) incorporated the unfinished writings into her biography of her aunt Morning has Broken (1986).
Farjeon's most widely published work is the hymn "Morning has Broken", written in 1931, which became an international hit with Cat Stevens' 1971 recording, which reached number nine in the UK charts, six on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100, number one on the U.S. easy listening chart in 1972, and number four on the Canadian RPM magazine charts. She also wrote the Advent carol "People, Look East!", usually sung to an old French melody, and often performed by children's choirs.
She wrote for the BBC's Have You Brought Your Music? The series was devised by Quentin Tod during the 1930s.