Hill

LORNA HILL (1902 - 1991)

Lorna hill was born in Durham City. She took a BA at Durham University where she met her future husband. They married in Newcastle Cathedral in 1928 and thereafter she lived as a vicar's wife at Matfen in Northumberland, where her daughter Vicki was born.

Her publishing career began by pure chance, but she went on to be one of the most collected girls' authors of the post-war period. It was in her blood, however, to be a writer. her mother, Edith Rutter Leatham was a poet, best remembered for her well-known Child's Grace:

Thank you God for the world so sweet,
Thank you for the food we eat,
Thank you for the birds that sing
Thank you, God, for everything!

Lorna Hill wrote her first nine books - five 'Marjorie' and four 'Patience - for her daughter Vicki in fat exercise-books, all except one with water-colour and line illustrations. These works are down to-earth pony adventures in the Northumberland Lorna knew and loved. Then the family saw Alicia Markova and Anton Dolin dance at the Theatre Royal in Newcastle and Vicki decided to enrol at Sadlers Wells in London. To assuage her loneliness, Lorna began writing her famous 'Wells' series. Lorna Hill's stories frequently begin with descriptions of 1950's Newcastle; Tilly's shop; Fenwick's; Central station. Many of the 'Wells' heroines - Jane, Sylvia, Ella, Nona, Annette, Vicki and Vanessa - begin their career at the dance school in Jesmond, which still exists behind its impressive front entrance in Manor House Road. In the 'Wells' books it is called the Nelly Brandon school (actually the Nelly Potts school at the time). Lorna Hill often contrasts the ordered world of art with the wild Northumbrian landscape, and suggests their fundamental inter-relationship, linked to the apprehension of beauty. Nor does the darker side of Newcastle life go undescribed: the scenario of grim fate alleviated by eventual rescue is a not infrequent resource. In Swan Feather, for example, the scene shifts to the back streets of Benwell, but there are idyllic interludes in Jesmond Dene and Paddy Freeman's Park in High Heaton. (Skating on the pond there also occurs in Mystery in the Middle Marches by Winifred Finlay (q.v.)). The Vicarage Children trilogy (1961) uses both Matfen and Chesterholm, now the museum at Vindolanda on the Roman Wall.

The publishing firm Girls Gone By is doing valuable work in republishing Lorna Hill, among others, introducing new generations to a fine literary heritage of stories, whose sense of place and understanding of human relationships still ring true today.

Myers Literary Guide:	The North-East
LORNA HILL (1902 - 1991) Lorna hill was born in Durham City. She took a BA at Durham University where she met her future husband. They married in Newcastle Cathedral in 1928 and thereafter she lived as a vicar's wife at Matfen in Northumberland, where her daughter Vicki was born. Her publishing career began by pure chance, but she went on to be one of the most collected girls' authors of the post-war period. It was in her blood, however, to be a writer. her mother, Edith Rutter Leatham was a poet, best remembered for her well-known Child's Grace: Thank you God for the world so sweet, Thank you for the food we eat, Thank you for the birds that sing Thank you, God, for everything! Lorna Hill wrote her first nine books - five 'Marjorie' and four 'Patience - for her daughter Vicki in fat exercise-books, all except one with water-colour and line illustrations. These works are down to-earth pony adventures in the Northumberland Lorna knew and loved. Then the family saw Alicia Markova and Anton Dolin dance at the Theatre Royal in Newcastle and Vicki decided to enrol at Sadlers Wells in London. To assuage her loneliness, Lorna began writing her famous 'Wells' series. Lorna Hill's stories frequently begin with descriptions of 1950's Newcastle; Tilly's shop; Fenwick's; Central station. Many of the 'Wells' heroines - Jane, Sylvia, Ella, Nona, Annette, Vicki and Vanessa - begin their career at the dance school in Jesmond, which still exists behind its impressive front entrance in Manor House Road. In the 'Wells' books it is called the Nelly Brandon school (actually the Nelly Potts school at the time). Lorna Hill often contrasts the ordered world of art with the wild Northumbrian landscape, and suggests their fundamental inter-relationship, linked to the apprehension of beauty. Nor does the darker side of Newcastle life go undescribed: the scenario of grim fate alleviated by eventual rescue is a not infrequent resource. In Swan Feather, for example, the scene shifts to the back streets of Benwell, but there are idyllic interludes in Jesmond Dene and Paddy Freeman's Park in High Heaton. (Skating on the pond there also occurs in Mystery in the Middle Marches by Winifred Finlay (q.v.)). The Vicarage Children trilogy (1961) uses both Matfen and Chesterholm, now the museum at Vindolanda on the Roman Wall. The publishing firm Girls Gone By is doing valuable work in republishing Lorna Hill, among others, introducing new generations to a fine literary heritage of stories, whose sense of place and understanding of human relationships still ring true today.
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