Violet Methley
English children's writer (1882 – 1953)
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Violet M. Methley (1882 – 1953) was an English writer of children's adventure novels, short stories, and drama.
Early life
Methley was born in Seal, Kent.[1]
Works
Notable themes in her works are:
- Biography. Methley was the author of Camille Desmoulins: A Biography (1915) and gave a 'Biography of Boots and Shoes' on Radio 4 in 1924.[2]
- Drama. Methley wrote plays for young children to act out[3] and a guide to drama (Amateur Actor's Companion, 1915), noting that 'We are very far removed now from the century-old days when Jane Austen's heroine considered it grossly indecent and immodest for young ladies to dream of acting a play with a love-scene.'[4]
- Australia. It is speculated that Methley spent time living in Australia as many of her stories feature Australia or Australian people. For example, 'The Bunyip Patrol' (1926) features a patrol of schoolgirls who attempt to track down the creature of Aboriginal legend, the bunyip.[5]
- Horror. Methley is noted as an early woman writer of science fiction and horror.[6] Some of her stories ('Dread at Darracombe', 1930 and 'The Milk Carts', 1932) appear in Weird Tales under her own name.[7]
- WWII. 'The Vackies' (1941) follows a family of evacuated children and picks up on the themes of evacuated children’s attachment to animals.[8][9]
Select works
- Fourteen Fourteens (1900)
- Camille Desmoulins: A Biography (1914)
- Girl Friday (1928)
- The Windmill Guides (1930)
- The Queer Island (1934)
- Seeing the Empire (1935)
- Cocky and Co. and Their Adventures (1937)
- Dragon Island: An Adventure Story for Girls (1938)
- Mystery Camp (1940)
- Lydia Gaff (1941)
- Great Galleon (1942)
- Derry Down-Under: A Story of Adventure in Australia (1943)
- Two in the Bush (1945)
- Georgie and the Dragon (1950)
- Armada Ahoy! (1953)