Tea By The Nursery Fire: A Children's Nanny at the Turn of the Century

Noel Streatfeild

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Emily Huckwell spent almost her entire life working for one family. Born in a tiny Sussex village in the 1870s, she went into domestic service in the Burton household before she was twelve, earning 5 a year. She began as a nursery maid, progressing to under nurse and then head nanny, looking after two generations of children. One of the children in her care was the father of Noel Streatfeild, the author of Ballet Shoes and one of the best-loved children's writers of the 20th century.

Basing her story on fact and family legend, Noel Streatfeild here tells Emily's story and with her characteristic warmth and intimacy creates a fascinating portrait of Victorian and Edwardian life above and below stairs.

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Noel Streatfeild

Noel Streatfeild

Prolific and much-loved author of Ballet Shoes, among many other books, Noel Streatfeild was born in 1895, a daughter of the Bishop of Lewes and a great-granddaughter of the prison reformer Elizabeth Fry. After a rebellious childhood, she worked in a wartime munitions factory before going to RADA and becoming an actress for ten years. Her first six novels were for adults, but she was persuaded to re-work The Whicharts (1931) as a novel for children, and wrote many more after that. Streatfeild, who never married, led a busy London literary life and, by the time she died in 1986, had written over eighty books as well as three volumes of autobiography.

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