Hester Burton (1913–2000)

Hester Burton, née Wood-Hill, was born in Beccles, Suffolk, England, where her father served three terms as mayor. She was educated at Headington School, Oxford and read English at Oxford University (St. Anne's College), where she graduated with honors in 1936. The following year, she married Reginald W.B. Burton, a Classics don at Oriel College, Oxford, with whom she had three daughters.
For a while, she worked as a part-time grammar school teacher.
In 1949, Burton published a biography of Barbara Bodichon, the 19th-century feminist, artist, and women's education activist. She worked for Oxford University Press from 1956 to 1964, contributing two volumes to the Oxford Sheldonian English Series for secondary schoolchildren. She was an assistant editor for the revised Oxford Junior Encyclopaedia, and edited two anthologies published in 1959: A Book of Modern Stories and Her First Ball.

Between 1960 and 1981, she published 18 books of her own for children, many of them illustrated by Victor Ambrus. Her debut novel was The Great Gale (The Flood at Reedsmere in the USA), inspired by the devastation caused by the 1953 North Sea flood on her home county of Suffolk. In 1963, she won the Carnegie Medal for Children’s Literature for Time of Trial. Her books had strong, independent heroines, often with strong opinions.