Active discussions

Meet the Other Phone. Child-safe in minutes.

Meet the Other Phone.
Child-safe in minutes.

Buy now

Please or to access all these features

Talk
AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Original poster

AIBU to wonder if nearly all children’s book authors had sad life’s

52 replies

ConfusedWife1234 · 21/12/2018 21:42

To name a few who had:

A.A. Milne (Winnieh the Pooh), J.R.R. Tolkien (The Hobbit), C.S. Lewis (The Chronicles of Narnia), J.K. Rowling (Harry Potter), Enid Blyton (Five go on...). That‘s four authors about whose biography I learned but and I discovered they really had sad lives. I do not know the biographies of most writers to be honest and wonder if some had happy lives.

OP posts:
Dinosforall · 21/12/2018 21:47

OP do you mean sad childhoods? JKR doesn't seem to have had an especially sad life so far.

NotSuchASmugMarriedNow1 · 21/12/2018 21:51

What was sad about JK Rowlings life?

bertielab · 21/12/2018 21:53

It's easy to look back and say X,Y,Z -I think everyone is touched by illness, death, challenges etc it's those things that stand out in a biography as things that mark and change us. Looking at my 5 closest friends -I could say divorce, death, cancer, job loss, money challenges -etc we have been affected by one or more of these each.

Original poster
ConfusedWife1234 · 21/12/2018 21:53

Actually no I meant sad life.

Do not get me wrong. I am not an Expertin those writers. I just know what I have heard about them, not always from reliable sources but I think that...

A.A. Milne had physical disabilities and PTSD from WWI he never learned to cope with it and his son stopped talking to him.

JRR Tolkien had bouts of depression and lost his closest friend in WWI

C.S. Lewis had his brother die from alcoholism and his wife (or was it the girlfriend) die from cancer

J.K. Rowling had an unhappy (and abusive?) marriage and was a dirt poor single mother

Enid Blyton had an unhappy childhood. Do not remember why but I heard so.

OP posts:
DitaVonPeas · 21/12/2018 21:55

Surely if you look back over the entirety of anybody's life it would have some desperately sad things in it? I certainly think the majority would anyway.

Then again I don't know an awful lot about those guys lives; can you summarise an example?

DitaVonPeas · 21/12/2018 21:56

X post, sorry, I'll read your last post!

HollowTalk · 21/12/2018 21:56

You do realise there are an awful lot more writers than that, don't you?!

NotSuchASmugMarriedNow1 · 21/12/2018 21:56

With J K Rowling, I thought money was tight for a while, not that she was "dirt poor".

dapplegrey · 21/12/2018 21:57

Very interesting point.
What about E Nesbit, I wonder, or Noel Streatfield?
Maybe their writing was a way of escaping from their unhappy memories.

DitaVonPeas · 21/12/2018 21:57

Just read your last post. Perhaps I'm way off here, but those just look like a fairly normal amount of bad things to happen in a person's life, no?

silentcrow · 21/12/2018 21:59

Look at the age of those authors! Aside from Rowling, they all lived through wars and no NHS. Tragedy like early death touched pretty much everyone then.

I know plenty about children's authors, it's my job. They're no better or worse off than the rest of us (and you can chat to many of them on Twitter!). The current trend for dead parents in children's books is just a trope to give the characters space for adventures.

Original poster
ConfusedWife1234 · 21/12/2018 22:05

@Hollowtalk Of course there are more writers but those are the only ones whose life story I know of. Do you know the life story of another children’s books writer?

@DitaVonPeas I am not sure. I guess I grew up very sheltered in an upper middle class family and the only really bad thing that happened in my life so far is my hubby (not me) having mental health stuff he can cope with. Most people I know have very happy life’s. I think those writers life’s are sad.

OP posts:
Herja · 21/12/2018 22:10

Those are definitely normally sad lives. I think yours is just a bit sheltered in all honesty.

Original poster
ConfusedWife1234 · 21/12/2018 22:10

@Notsuchasmug.... I think that there was a time in the live of JK Rowling when she could not afford and had to go to a coffee shop to write there.

@silentcrow That’s a great point you make about medical care. Nearly all those people’s life could have been better with proper medical care.
JRR Tolkien‘s mother even died from diabetes.

OP posts:
Original poster
ConfusedWife1234 · 21/12/2018 22:13

@Herja What would you consideration be an exceptionally sad life then?

OP posts:
Herja · 21/12/2018 22:15

Or maybe not everyone you know does have happy lives? I've lived with drug addict parents, dad died when I was young. Abusive and traumatic early to mid childhood. Friends started dying at a few a year from 16, which is still happening now (I'm fast running out of them). Rape. Unpleasant sexual assault. Fairly unmanageable mental health issues. Sporadically violent marriage. My boyfriend just died. I'm 28. Most people don't know about most of it. I look like I have a pretty happy life to most people and I do generally. Those lives don't seem unusually hard to me. Bits of life are hard, it's how it works.

ScreamingValenta · 21/12/2018 22:16

Antonia Forest seems to have been contented with her life - she's far and away the best children's author who's ever lived.

Herja · 21/12/2018 22:17

Cross posted a bit. I'm not sure what I'd consider exceptionally sad. But certainly something more than them.

DitaVonPeas · 21/12/2018 22:18

I would definitely say those live were fairly unremarkable in terms of sadness, but the thing about sadness is you can have a lot of terrible hardships and still consider yourself as having had a "happy" life. Equally you can find immense sadness in things others think are run of the mill. I suppose it depends if there were highs to match or outweigh the lows.

Original poster
ConfusedWife1234 · 21/12/2018 22:20

@Herja Oh. That’s sad. I am sorry that happened to you.

@ScreamingValenta I have never heard of her, will look her up now.

OP posts:
ScreamingValenta · 21/12/2018 22:23

Do give Antonia Forest a try, OP - her books stand up exceptionally well to adult reading. I would love never to have heard of her, to have the pleasure of reading her novels for the first time again. I re-read them annually.

user1473878824 · 21/12/2018 22:24

Well she could afford to sit in a coffee shop and write...

ScreamingValLongstreet · 21/12/2018 22:25

... I even have an Antonia Forest version of my username for times like this Grin.

Original poster
ConfusedWife1234 · 21/12/2018 22:28

@user... I think the owner allowed Rowling to sit in the coffee shop because he felt sorry for her... but I might be wrong.

@ScreamingValenta Which of her books do you recommend most?

OP posts:
BehemothPullsThePeasantsPlough · 21/12/2018 22:31

An acquaintance of mine is a very successful, very talented children’s author. She’s doing fine thank you. Simon Mayo seems to be quite well adjusted. Philip Reeve, Julia Donaldson, Philip Pullman, Eoin Colfer, Jeff Kinney, Rick Riordan all seem to be doing just fine apart from having to decide how to spend their millions. And JK Rowling’s backstory of “got divorced, went on benefits, parent died when she was 25” is not ideal but it’s not going to sell any copies of Take A Break magazine is it?

Roald Dahl, I grant you, was a bit odd. David Walliams seems quite content with his life but MN begs to differ.