Nan Chauncy

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Nan Chauncy, 1950

Nan Chauncy (born May 28, 1900 in Northwood , Middlesex , England , † May 1, 1970 in Baghdad , Tasmania ; born Nancen Beryl Masterman ) was a British-Australian children's author.

Life

Nan Chauncy was born and raised in an English middle-class family with a twin brother and four other siblings. When she was twelve, the family went to Australia, where her father found a job as a civil engineer with the local government in Hobart , the capital of Tasmania . When the contract expired two years later, the family settled in Baghdad, 20 miles north of Hobart, and set up an orchard. For the next four years, Nan Chauncy grew up in the rolling hills of the Southern Midlands around Baghdad and in Hobart, where she attended school. When the First World War ended in 1918, the family gave up the plantation and moved to the capital, only the eldest brother kept a plot of land with a house in the north. Nan Chauncy got involved with the girl scouts and was also the leader of a local group in Claremont, so they made the property available for scout camps as well.

After a temporary stay in England, Chauncy worked from 1923 for the confectionery manufacturer Cadbury in Hobart. After the onset of the Great Depression , she followed her twin brother to England in 1930, where she continued her boy scout training. She also began to write and trained in this direction. She traveled to other European countries and worked for four years as an English teacher at a Danish scout school.

On her father's 80th birthday, she returned to Australia in 1938 and on the way met the German Anton Rosenfeld, who emigrated to Australia because of the Nazis. In the same year they married, moved into the cottage near Baghdad that their brother gave them, and began breeding goats. Since a German name was not welcomed in Australia after World War II, they both adopted the family name of Nan's grandmother Chauncy. During this time she worked for Australian radio as a writer for the youth program and wrote her first children's book. It was called They Found a Cave and is set in a Tasmanian cave like those found in the Baghdad area. They also increased their land holdings together and in 1946 made the Chauncy Vale property a legally protected animal reserve on private land.

The following year, Nan Chauncy found a publisher for her first novel in Oxford University Press in England and the book was published in 1948. It was very successful and sold over 50,000 times. In the following years she wrote other children's books in which she not only brought in her experience of nature in the Tasmanian landscape, but also addressed the preservation of nature and dealing with the Aborigines . Her fourth book Tiger in the Bush won the Australian Children's Book Council Award for Book of the Year in 1958, which she repeated with the following two books, Devil's Hill and Tangara . In 1962 she was the first Australian to be included on the list of honor for the Hans Christian Andersen Prize . Her books were already internationally successful and have been published in 13 languages ​​worldwide. Her debut novel They Found a Cave also has a Tasmanian film adaptation this year.

She continued to successfully write children's books until the late 1960s, before she became seriously ill with cancer and died in 1970.

In 1983, the Children's Book Council honored the writer by establishing the Nan Chauncy Award for the complete oeuvre of an Australian children's author. The prize, which was originally awarded every five years, has been awarded every two years since 1998.

In 1988, a series of television films from each state was produced to mark Australia's 200th anniversary. A film adaptation of Chauncy's book Devil's Hill was shot for Tasmania . In the same year, husband and daughter bequeathed the 380 hectare animal reserve with the house to the local council. The Chauncy Vale Wildlife Sanctuary , to which another 455 hectare area was added in the mid-2000s, is a destination for tourists and school classes, and the house, which until recently had no power connection, is a memorial to the author.

In 2005 she was one of the first to join the newly formed Tasmanian Honor Roll of Women, which honors women who have made outstanding contributions to the state.

Works

Children's books

  • They Found a Cave (1948, published in German under the title Höhlenmenschen im Capra-Tal )
  • World's End Was Home (1952)
  • A Fortune for the Brave (1954, German fight for island treasure , former title Der Schatz am Klauenfelsen )
  • Tiger in the Bush (1957)
  • Devil's Hill (1958, German Die Höhle im Teufelsberg. Adventurous experiences of the Lorennie children in the Tasmanian bush )
  • Tangara, Let Us Set Off Again (1961, German The riddle of the shell chain , also O, the young Emu ... )
  • The Secret Friends (1962)
  • Half a World Away (1962, German Das Blockhaus auf der Hügelkuppe ; semi-autobiographical novel)
  • The Roaring 40 (1963, German Daxi, Tom and Tolle Vier: How father Lorennie's youngest on Tasmania's lonely coast found a friend instead of gold )
  • High and Haunted Island (1964, German Verschollen in Port Davy )
  • The Skewbald Pony (1965)
  • Mathinna's People (1967, other title: Hunted in Their Own Land)
  • Lizzie's Lights (1968)
  • The Lighthouse Keeper's Son (1969)

more publishments

  • Panic at the Garage (1965, story)
  • Beekeeping (1967, about beekeeping)

literature

  • Eastman, Berenice: Nan Chauncy: A Writer's Life , Bagdad, Tas .: Friends of Chauncy Vale, 2000

swell

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Chauncy Vale Wildlife Sanctuary , Southern Midlands Council Information. Retrieved August 12, 2014.
personal data
SURNAME Chauncy, Nan
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Chauncy, Nancen Beryl (full name); Masterman, Nancen Beryl (maiden name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Australian children's author
DATE OF BIRTH May 28, 1900
PLACE OF BIRTH Northwood , Middlesex , England
DATE OF DEATH May 1, 1970
Place of death Baghdad , Tasmania , Australia