David Severn was a pseudonym

Pseudonym

A pseudonym is a name that a person assumes for a particular purpose and that differs from his or her original orthonym...

 for David Storr Unwin, a British writer. He was the son of publisher Sir Stanley Unwin

Stanley Unwin (publisher)

Sir Stanley Unwin was a British publisher, founder of the George Allen and Unwin house in 1914. This published serious and sometimes controversial authors like Bertrand Russell and Mahatma Gandhi....

, of whom Severn wrote a biography

Biography

A biography is a detailed description or account of someone's life. More than a list of basic facts , biography also portrays the subject's experience of those events...

 in 1982, Fifty Years with Father. He had Who's Who

Who's Who

Who's Who is the title of a number of reference publications, generally containing concise biographical information on a particular group of people...

entries throughout his writing career.

Severn attended Abbotsholme School, Derbyshire

Derbyshire

Derbyshire is a county in the East Midlands of England. A substantial portion of the Peak District National Park lies within Derbyshire. The northern part of Derbyshire overlaps with the Pennines, a famous chain of hills and mountains. The county contains within its boundary of approx...

, 1933–36, and worked for the League of Nations

League of Nations

The League of Nations was an intergovernmental organization founded as a result of the Paris Peace Conference that ended the First World War. It was the first permanent international organization whose principal mission was to maintain world peace...

 Secretariat, Geneva

Geneva

Geneva In the national languages of Switzerland the city is known as Genf , Ginevra and Genevra is the second-most-populous city in Switzerland and is the most populous city of Romandie, the French-speaking part of Switzerland...

 (1938), Unwin Brothers (printers), 1939, Blackwells (1940) and George Allen & Unwin (1941-43), having been declared medically unfit for the armed services

Armed Services

Armed Services is a collective term that refers to the major organisational entities of national armed forces, so named because they service a combat need in a specific combat environment. In most states Armed Services include the Army also known as Land Force or Ground Force, Navy also know a...

.

His first series for children (1942-46) featured "Crusoe" Robinson, who was befriended by youngsters in holiday adventures, many featuring a Romany group. The Warner family series followed (1947–52), featuring pheasant

Pheasant

Pheasants refer to some members of the Phasianinae subfamily of Phasianidae in the order Galliformes.Pheasants are characterised by strong sexual dimorphism, males being highly ornate with bright colours and adornments such as wattles and long tails. Males are usually larger than females and have...

s, ponies and country life. The scraperboard illustrations of Joan Kiddell-Monroe

Joan Kiddell-Monroe

Joan Kiddell-Monroe was a British-born author and illustrator of children's books, particularly notable for her folk-tale illustrations.-Biography:Joan Kiddell-Monroe was born on August 9, 1908 in Clacton-on-Sea, England...

 greatly enhance these two series.

A number of books experimented with the paranormal

Paranormal

Paranormal is a general term that designates experiences that lie outside "the range of normal experience or scientific explanation" or that indicates phenomena understood to be outside of science's current ability to explain or measure...

 and time-slip, and can be compared with many modern books revisiting supernatural

Supernatural

The supernatural or is that which is not subject to the laws of nature, or more figuratively, that which is said to exist above and beyond nature...

 themes. Drumbeats! has a musical youngster beating a native drum which transports children to a lost expedition to Africa

Africa

Africa is the world's second largest and second most populous continent, after Asia. At about 30.2 million km² including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of the Earth's total surface area and 20.4% of the total land area...

 twenty years earlier. Dream Gold shows the hypnotic power of one boy over another, with dream

Dream

Dreams are successions of images, ideas, emotions, and sensations that occur involuntarily in the mind during certain stages of sleep. The content and purpose of dreams are not definitively understood, though they have been a topic of scientific speculation, philosophical intrigue and religious...

s reliving the conflicts of their ancestors. These are his most interesting books, and the ones he wished to be remembered by. The Future Took Us is a time-slip into 3,000 C.E. The Girl in the Grove, his longest book, is a psychological ghost story

Ghost story

A ghost story may be any piece of fiction, or drama, or an account of an experience, that includes a ghost, or simply takes as a premise the possibility of ghosts or characters' belief in them. Colloquially, the term can refer to any kind of scary story. In a narrower sense, the ghost story has...

. He also produced illustrated books for younger children.

Only his last three books were published by Allen and Unwin.

Books for children as David Severn

(Published in London by The Bodley Head

The Bodley Head

The Bodley Head is an English publishing house, founded in 1887 and existing as an independent entity until the 1970s. The name has been used as an imprint of Random House Children's Books since 1987...

unless indicated, selected titles in New York by Houghton Mifflin 1946-47 and thereafter Macmillan. Popular titles translated into various European languages.)

• Rick Afire (1942)
• A Cabin for Crusoe (1943)
• A Waggon for Five (1944)
• Hermit in the Hills (1945)
• Forest Holiday (1946)
• Ponies and Poachers (1947)
• Wily Fox and the Baby Show (1947)
• Bill Badger and the Pine Martens (1947)
• The Cruise of the Maiden Castle (1948)
• Treasure for Three (1949)
• Dream Gold (1949)
• Wily Fox and the Christmas Party (1949)
• Bill Badger and the Bathing Pool (1949)
• Wily Fox and the Missing Fireworks (1950)
• Bill Badger and the Buried Treasure (1950)
• Crazy Castle (1951)
• My Foreign Correspondent through Africa (1951, Meiklejohn & Sons)
• Burglars and Bandicoots (1952)
• Drumbeats! (1953)
• Walnut Tree Meadow (1956)
• Blaze of Broadfurrow Farm (1956)
• The Future Took Us (1957)
• The Green-Eyed Gryffon (1958, Hamish Hamilton)
• Foxy Boy (1959) (The Wild Valley) (New York: Dutton)
• Three at the Sea (1959)
• Jeff Dickson: Cowhand (1963, Jonathan Cape)
• Clouds over Alberhorn (1963, Hamish Hamilton)
• A Dog for a Day (1965, Hamish Hamilton)
• The Girl in the Grove (1974, Allen & Unwin)
• The Wishing Bone (1977, Allen & Unwin)

Books for adults as David Unwin

• The Governor’s Wife (Michael Joseph, 1954)
• A View of the Heath (Michael Joseph, 1956)
• Fifty Years with Father (Allen & Unwin, 1982)

Sources

• Who's Who.
• Carpenter H and Pritchard M, 1984, The Oxford Companion to Children’s Literature, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Doyle, Brian 1978 in Kirkpatrick, DL, Twentieth Century Children’s Writers, London: Macmillan; 4th edition text by Linda Yeatman.
• "David Severn" in Cambridge Companion to Children's Literature.
• Stephen Bigger, David Severn (David Storr Unwin), Children’s Writer.