Margaret Maddocks
Personal Information
Description
Margaret Kathleen Avern was born on 10 August 1906 in Caversham, Berkshire, England, UK. She was educated at St. Helen's School, Northwood, Middlesex, and in Dresden. On 1937, she married Richard Maddocks, who died on 1970. Published since 1947, she is the only novelist to win four Romantic Novel of the Year Award by the Romantic Novelists' Association for her novels Larksbrook (1962), The Silver Answer (1965), Thea (1970), and The Moon is Square (1976). In 1977, she wrote her autobiography: An Unlessoned Girl. Margaret Maddocks comments: "Any writer must find it difficult to assess her own work honestly and objectively, so I can only say that I hope my books may be considered as well-written. They appear to be popular among all age groups in the nine countries where they have been published. This is probably because the reader can believe in the characters and the plot holds the interest to the end. They tend to cheer rather than depress."
Books
Thea
Thea Cranbrook, recently widowed and burdened with the problems of two grown-up daughters, has little time for thinking of her own, but when Harriet leaves her husband and Lizzy falls in love with a man old enough to be her father she finds herself facing, for the first time, the fact that her own marriage might have been less than perfect. The difficulties with which the various age groups enmesh themselves in each other, so that the feelings of mother and daughters merge and are resolved, make an absorbing study of two generations, hoping and striving for an elusive happiness.
Fair Shines the Day
In the early 1900's, the Fairfield family live at Foxholes Farm on the Welsh border. To Marinda Fairfield, the farm is the whole of her life, though her parents are disturbed by her fondness for books as they consider reading a waste of time. Her mother is a little shocked by the arrival in the village of Laura Gray, who has not only divorced her husband, but actually earns her living by writing. The Grays exert a far-reaching influence on Marinda, and for a time she is torn from her beloved home.