1903-1992 · English children's author, creator of The Borrowers
About Mary Norton
Mary Norton (1903–1992) was born in London and grew up in a Georgian house in Leighton Buzzard, Bedfordshire, which is often named as the model for the old house in The Borrowers. She acted with the Old Vic company before marrying and living for some years in Portugal, and spent part of the Second World War in the United States. Her first children's books, The Magic Bed-Knob (1943) and Bonfires and Broomsticks (1947), were later joined as Bedknob and Broomstick; The Borrowers won the Carnegie Medal and began a series of five novels.
The Borrowers is told within a frame. A girl called Kate, about ten, sits crocheting with old Mrs May, who lives in two rooms of Kate's parents' house.