Violet M. Methley (1882 – 1953) was an English writer of children’s adventure novels, short stories, and drama. 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.[1]
  • Drama. Methley wrote plays for young children to act out[2] 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.'[3]
  • 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.[4]
  • Horror. Methley is noted as an early woman writer of science fiction and horror.[5] Some of her stories ('Dread at Darracombe', 1930 and 'The Milk Carts', 1932) appear in Weird Tales under her own name.[6]
  • WWII. 'The Vackies' (1941) follows a family of evacuated children and picks up on the themes of evacuated children’s attachment to animals.[7][8]
Methley's biography of Camille Desmoulins

Select works

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  • 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)

References

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  1. ^ Bradford, Richard (2018-11-28). A Companion to Literary Biography. John Wiley & Sons. p. 88. ISBN 978-1-118-89629-7.
  2. ^ May, Helen; Nawrotzki, Kristen; Prochner, Larry (2018-05-31). Kindergarten Narratives on Froebelian Education: Transnational Investigations. Bloomsbury Academic. ISBN 978-1-350-06993-0.
  3. ^ Meeuwis, Michael (2019). Everyone's Theater: Literature and Daily Life in England, 1860-1914. University of Michigan Press. p. 92. ISBN 978-0-472-13147-1.
  4. ^ Holden, Robert; Holden, Nicholas (2001). Bunyips: Australia's Folklore of Fear. National Library Australia. p. 165. ISBN 978-0-642-10732-9.
  5. ^ Davin, Eric Leif (2006). Partners in Wonder: Women and the Birth of Science Fiction, 1926-1965. Lexington Books. p. 66. ISBN 978-0-7391-1267-0.
  6. ^ Howlett, Mike (2010-11-30). The Weird World of Eerie Publications: Comic Gore That Warped Millions of Young Minds. Feral House. ISBN 978-1-936239-21-4.
  7. ^ Andrews, Maggie (2019-08-08). Women and Evacuation in the Second World War: Femininity, Domesticity and Motherhood. Bloomsbury Academic. p. 163. ISBN 978-1-4411-4068-5.
  8. ^ Edwards, Owen Dudley (2007-08-01). British Children's Fiction in the Second World War. Edinburgh University Press. p. 149. ISBN 978-0-7486-2872-8.