Winifred Cawley

WINIFRED CAWLEY (1915 - 2001)

Winifred Cawley wrote only four children's books but they were of significance in the development of social realism in this area. Her most important work was Gran at Coalgate which won the 1974 Guardian Children's Literature prize and was runner-up for the coveted Carnegie Medal in the same year. Now a fashionable theme in the work of such authors as Jacqueline Wilson and Melvin Burgess, tales about children from less affluent homes were not common until the late 1950s and '60s - with the celebrated exception of Eve Garnett's The Family from One-End Street, written in the 1930s and still popular in the post-war period.

Winifred Cawley was born in Felton, Northumberland. Her parents were both in service to the local gentry, and she went to schools in Wallsend before winning a scholarship to read English at Newcastle University. In 1937 she moved to London to do a teaching diploma. Marriage to Arthur Cawley in 1939 cut short her work on a master's degree in Restoration drama and she began a teaching career as she followed her husband's work for the British Council in Romania, Yugoslavia and Cairo. She then taught in Leeds and Sheffield and finally Australia, where she settled and began to write.

Down the Long Stairs (1964) is set in Newcastle and Tynemouth Castle in 1648, during the Civil War and gives a picture of 17th century society from the point of view of both the wealthy coal-owners and the miners. Cawley's emphasis throughout is on character and motivation rather than setting. Her next book, Feast of the Serpent (1969) in which some of the same characters appear, tells of Adonell Heron's strange pilgrimage to find the Faa, or gypsy people for the spring festival of the serpent. The story is set in Newcastle and the Roman Wall during the declining days of the Border reivers, against a background of political unrest following the execution of Charles I. Adonell becomes involved in the horrific events in Newcastle in 1650, when fifteen people accused of witchcraft were hanged on the Town Moor.

With Gran at Coalgate Winifred moves on in time to 1926, in County Durham (Leadgate) at the time of the great coal strike. Jinnie is sent to stay with her grandmother after suffering from exam anxiety. The novel contrasts a tolerant open-minded community with Jinnie's repressive chapel upbringing in town. Winifred drew on memories of her own grandparents and so re-created a rich community of characters as seen through the eyes of a young adolescent. Winifred's last book Silver and Many Mansions (1976) is distinctly biographical and is based on actual events in her Wallsend upbringing. Her depiction of class nuance and topographical importance is particularly telling.

Summing up her writing, Cawley said: 'In the first two books, I tried to imagine what it was like to be an ordinary boy or girl in long-ago, extraordinary times. In the next two, I tried to record what it was like to be an ordinary child in very ordinary and very humble circumstances fifty years ago'. She is perhaps more successful in the latter, where her loving but unsentimental picture of growing up poor in the North East between the wars contributed to the expanding horizons of children's literature, not only in matters of class, but also with regard to the importance of place and region.

Myers Literary Guide:	The North-East
WINIFRED CAWLEY (1915 - 2001) Winifred Cawley wrote only four children's books but they were of significance in the development of social realism in this area. Her most important work was Gran at Coalgate which won the 1974 Guardian Children's Literature prize and was runner-up for the coveted Carnegie Medal in the same year. Now a fashionable theme in the work of such authors as Jacqueline Wilson and Melvin Burgess, tales about children from less affluent homes were not common until the late 1950s and '60s - with the celebrated exception of Eve Garnett's The Family from One-End Street, written in the 1930s and still popular in the post-war period. Winifred Cawley was born in Felton, Northumberland. Her parents were both in service to the local gentry, and she went to schools in Wallsend before winning a scholarship to read English at Newcastle University. In 1937 she moved to London to do a teaching diploma. Marriage to Arthur Cawley in 1939 cut short her work on a master's degree in Restoration drama and she began a teaching career as she followed her husband's work for the British Council in Romania, Yugoslavia and Cairo. She then taught in Leeds and Sheffield and finally Australia, where she settled and began to write. Down the Long Stairs (1964) is set in Newcastle and Tynemouth Castle in 1648, during the Civil War and gives a picture of 17th century society from the point of view of both the wealthy coal-owners and the miners. Cawley's emphasis throughout is on character and motivation rather than setting. Her next book, Feast of the Serpent (1969) in which some of the same characters appear, tells of Adonell Heron's strange pilgrimage to find the Faa, or gypsy people for the spring festival of the serpent. The story is set in Newcastle and the Roman Wall during the declining days of the Border reivers, against a background of political unrest following the execution of Charles I. Adonell becomes involved in the horrific events in Newcastle in 1650, when fifteen people accused of witchcraft were hanged on the Town Moor. With Gran at Coalgate Winifred moves on in time to 1926, in County Durham (Leadgate) at the time of the great coal strike. Jinnie is sent to stay with her grandmother after suffering from exam anxiety. The novel contrasts a tolerant open-minded community with Jinnie's repressive chapel upbringing in town. Winifred drew on memories of her own grandparents and so re-created a rich community of characters as seen through the eyes of a young adolescent. Winifred's last book Silver and Many Mansions (1976) is distinctly biographical and is based on actual events in her Wallsend upbringing. Her depiction of class nuance and topographical importance is particularly telling. Summing up her writing, Cawley said: 'In the first two books, I tried to imagine what it was like to be an ordinary boy or girl in long-ago, extraordinary times. In the next two, I tried to record what it was like to be an ordinary child in very ordinary and very humble circumstances fifty years ago'. She is perhaps more successful in the latter, where her loving but unsentimental picture of growing up poor in the North East between the wars contributed to the expanding horizons of children's literature, not only in matters of class, but also with regard to the importance of place and region.
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