British Children Authors

Lewis Carroll

The maths teacher who made Wonderland. Lewis Carroll was not a real name. The man who sent Alice down the rabbit hole was a shy Oxford maths teacher called Charles Dodgson.

Robert Louis Stevenson

The sick boy who wrote Treasure Island. Robert Louis Stevenson was often ill, and his family wanted him to build lighthouses. He chose to write, crossed an ocean for the woman he loved, and found his home in Samoa.

Kenneth Grahame

The bank clerk who made Mr Toad. Kenneth Grahame worked in a bank for thirty years. He told his son stories about a rat, a mole, a badger and a very loud toad, and they became a famous book.

J. M. Barrie

The man who invented Peter Pan. Barrie's older brother died when he was six. Years later he told stories in a London park to five brothers, and that is where the boy who would not grow up began.

Rudyard Kipling

Born in India, sent away at six. Rudyard Kipling wrote The Jungle Book, with Mowgli, Baloo and Shere Khan. He wrote it in America, about the country he had to leave as a small boy.

Roald Dahl

His teachers said he could not write. The man who made Willy Wonka, Matilda and the Big Friendly Giant was told at school that he was bad at English. They were very wrong.

Lewis Carroll

Two names, one Wonderland. He taught mathematics at Oxford and was shy with adults, but on a boat trip in 1862 a girl named Alice asked him for a story, and three years later the world read it.

Robert Louis Stevenson

He crossed an ocean to marry, and an ocean to live. Too ill for school in Edinburgh and unwilling to join the family trade, Stevenson wrote Treasure Island, Kidnapped and Jekyll and Hyde, then sailed to Samoa.

Kenneth Grahame

Thirty years in a bank, one river he never forgot. Grahame lost his mother at five and was sent to live by the Thames; the happiest days of his childhood came back as Ratty, Mole, Badger and Toad.

J. M. Barrie

The boy who would not grow up, and the family behind him. A brother's death when Barrie was six left him thinking about childhood for the rest of his life; in Kensington Gardens he met the five Llewellyn-Davies boys, and Peter Pan began.

Rudyard Kipling

The Jungle Book was written far from the jungle. Born in Bombay and sent to England at six, Kipling went back to India as a journalist, then wrote his most famous book from a house in Vermont.

Roald Dahl

From a school chocolate tasting to a chocolate factory. Dahl hated his strict boarding school, but it let pupils taste new chocolate bars; he became a wartime pilot, survived a crash in the desert, and turned all of it into stories.

Lewis Carroll

The Oxford mathematician behind the rabbit hole. Charles Dodgson stammered, stayed in his college and taught maths all his life; the nonsense he published in 1865 as Lewis Carroll has never been out of print.

Robert Louis Stevenson

From Edinburgh lighthouses to a grave in Samoa. His health kept him out of school and his heart kept him out of engineering; Stevenson wrote Treasure Island and Jekyll and Hyde, chased warm weather across the world, and died suddenly in 1894.

Kenneth Grahame

The river he never forgot. Sent to the Thames at five and refused the Oxford place he wanted, Grahame spent thirty years at the Bank of England and wrote, for his son, the book publishers first turned down.

J. M. Barrie

Peter Pan began in a London park. Barrie never stopped thinking about childhood after his brother David died at thirteen; the play he staged in 1904 grew out of the stories he told five real brothers in Kensington Gardens.

Rudyard Kipling

An Indian childhood, an English exile, an American desk. Kipling was born in Bombay under British rule, sent away at six, and returned as a journalist; The Jungle Book, set in India, was written in Vermont.

Roald Dahl

The pilot who wrote for children. Told at school that he could not write English, Dahl flew for the RAF and survived a crash in the Libyan desert; the strict teachers of Repton became the villains of his books.