The death has taken place of well known children’s author Eva Ibbotson. She was 85.
Ms. Ibbotson began writing for children rather late in life.
She was fifty before she penned her first book for younger readers and over the next 35 years Ms. Ibbotson was to produce some titles which have become classics.
Her work included Which Witch? and The Secret of Platform 13.
Many of her books concentrated on magic tales but in the 1990s she began to concentrate her efforts in adventure stories.
She was born Maria Wiesner in Vienna in 1925 to jewish parents. The family left Austria in the early 1930s as Hitler gained power in Germany.
Eva’s father, who was a pioneer of artificial insemination, moved to Edinburgh to work while her mother eventually set up home in London.
She married Alan Ibbotson in 1947.
Ms. Ibbotson had first written works of romantic fiction for adults but her success came from her titles for children. The first of these, The Great Ghost Rescue, was published in 1975.
Over the years her work won recognition. She was a runner-up for the Whitbread Children’s Book of the Year.
Her final book, One Dog and His Boy, will be published next year.
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