![]() Without friends, Sylvia depended on her siblings and the natural world to feed her lively imagination. Her childhood was marked by extreme material deprivation and interrupted schooling, as her mother moved from school to school, earning barely enough to keep the family of nine children. Her father, who was crippled with rheumatoid arthritis, told romantic, mythic stories, some of which informed Ashton-Warner’s fiction. She was born in Stratford, Taranaki, where the family income was earned by her mother Margaret Warner’s teaching in various remote country schools, where she was invariably at odds with the school board and national educational authorities. FROM THE OXFORD COMPANION TO NEW ZEALAND LITERATUREĪshton-Warner, Sylvia (1908–84), was a novelist, autobiographer and educational pioneer. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |