LOCAL AUTHORS & THEIR BOOKS
In the Autumn of 2023, one of Bourne Hall Museum’s temporary displays was about 24 authors with local connections and their books. This was on four A2 posters, as shown (much reduced) immediately below.
We are grateful to the Museum for permission to repeat this interesting overview of local literary talent. The material has been reformatted for this site – and we’ve added relevant links to fuller information on our other pages.
January 2024
Isabella Beeton grew up in the Grandstand as the stepdaughter of Henry Dorling, Clerk of the Course, and wrote her best-seller in the years after she was married.
Freya Dinshah (née Smith) was born in Epsom and went to Rosebery School before moving to Chicago where she founded the American Vegan Society in 1960.
Robert Fabian of Meadow Walk, Ewell was a celebrity undercover policeman – if that’s not a contradiction – and wrote exposés of the seedy side of life in the 1930s.
Michael Frayn grew up in Hillside Road, Ewell which inspired a bittersweet love of suburbia and a talent for writing farces. Plays of ideas and novels followed in the 70s.
George Gissing moved to Worple Road, Epsom in 1894 with a failed marriage, a nervous toddler, and plans for books on genteel poverty and the hardships of an author’s life.
Anna Glyn was travelling in the Middle East when news came that her first book had been published. She followed it in 1897 with a romance of Nonsuch Palace.
Thomas John Graham moved to Woodcote End House in the 1830s and saw his medical handbook run into a dozen editions, not bad for an ostracised Methodist.
Harry Harper grew up in Epsom with a journalist father and covered the Brooklands air crash of 1911, with books following aviation history over the next 50 years.
Robert Irwin attended Epsom College before abandoning Oxford for a Sufi shrine in Algeria and returned to an English career as an eloquent and combative Arabist.
Richard Jefferies wrote about the Hogsmill from a house in Tolworth, to which he had moved from Wiltshire in 1877 when advancing his career as a nature writer.
Martin Madan retired to Woodcote End House in 1781 following the scandal of his book which advocated polygamy as the answer to irresponsible seduction.
Ian McKay was born in Epsom in 1962 and graduated from punk fanzines to a critical engagement with radical art, social history and environmental issues.
John Osborne arrived in Stoneleigh Park Road with his overpowering mother in 1936 and in the 50s escaped, physically at least, to become an Angry Young Man.
Terence Reese was born in Epsom, played card games before he could read, and from 1945 brought out ninety books on how to play bridge, at which he was a genius.
Lord Rosebery built up a library at The Durdans which eventually took five days to sell, and retreated there to write biographies after losing the premiership in 1895.
Mariana Starke of Hylands House drew on her background in British India for plays, then in 1772 moved to Italy and reinvented the travel guide as an aid for tourists.
William Tans’ur (rhymes with dancer) was organist at St. Mary’s, Ewell, in the 1730s and brought out a string of pious music books also suitable for the spinet.
John Toland came to Woodcote in 1711, trailing a reputation as a pamphleteer, apostate, freethinker, philosopher and spy, and finding Epsom Spa very congenial.
Sharon Turner took lodgings in Waterloo Road in 1800 while he was learning Old English and Icelandic, which led to the first modern history of the Anglo-Saxons.
Hugh Walpole did a stint teaching at Epsom College in 1908 and turned the experience into his first good novel, which founded his career and alienated the school.
H.G. Wells never lived anywhere long, but his time at The Avenue, Worcester Park in the 1890s gave him the setting for a novel exploring female emancipation.
William Hale White was at Flint House in Worple Road in 1865, when he was already established as ‘Mark Rutherford’ the novelist of lower-middle-class life.
Joe Wicks kept the nation fit and hopeful in the Covid lockdown of 2020 after growing up on Longmead and building a career as fitness coach and cookbook author.
Hazel Wynn Jones (née Swift) of Reigate Road worked in the 1950s as continuity girl for films in Italy, and put the experience to good use in her crime fiction.