Angela Brazil (1) (1868–1947)

Angela Brazil was born in Preston, in the north of England, the youngest of four children of Clarence Brazil, a prosperous mill manager, and his wife Angelica McKinnel. Her liberal-minded mother encouraged the children to be creative and nurtured their interests in literature, music and botany. Angela began writing at about age 10, producing a magazine with a close childhood friend. The family moved frequently around Lancashire, following her father's work, and lived in Manchester, Bolton and Bury. She went to small local schools before becoming a boarder at Ellerslie, an exclusive girls' school, as a teenager. She attended the Heatherley School of Fine Art in London, along with her sister Amy. After her father's death, in 1899, Angela and her mother traveled in Europe. She later settled with her brother in Coventry. She contributed articles and stories to magazines and finally began working on a novel at age 35. Her first published book was A Terrible Tomboy (1904). Angela's so-called schoolgirl fiction was innovative and brought her fame because it moved away from the Victorian ideal of teaching young girls moral principles and ethics to entertaining and amusing them.

She was the first to write stories told from the viewpoint of girls, focused on relationships, and used the latest slang. The rise in the number of young, educated, middle-class girls in that era created a new market of readers avid for girl-friendly versions of books like Tom Brown’s School Days, and Angela Brazil sold more than three million copies in her lifetime. Her work paved the way for many other authors, including Enid Blyton. In 1925, she published an account of her early life, My Own Schooldays.