Eva Ibbotson
, 1925 - 2010
Eva Ibbotson was born in Vienna, the daughter of Bertold Paul Wisner, a physician and infertility specialist, and Anna Wilhemene Gueyper, a novelist and playwright. They were non-practising Jews who were forced to flee to London prior to World War II. Ibbotson was raised in London, and studied physiology at Cambridge University, where she met her husband, Alan Ibbotson, an ecologist. She wrote romantic novels, television scripts, and children’s books, and was most renowned for the last. Her work was often shortlisted for major literary awards, including the Carnegie Medal, the Romance Novelists’ Association, the Smarties Prize, the Whitbread Children’s Book Award, and more. Her novels are distinctive for a nostalgia for pre-war Viennese and Austrian culture, by an interest in arts and culture, and by an intertextual interweaving of myth, literature and history.
Bio prepared by Elizabeth Hale, University of New England, ehale@une.edu.au
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