Staples, Mary Jane

(British, 1911– )

Staples is a very popular writer of family stories. There are sixteen books in The Adams Family of Walworth series, a readable saga of Cockney life set in the 1930s and 1940s, many of them reflecting wartime experience. Begin with the first, Down Lambeth Way (1988). Staples has also written novels outside this series, still with a London setting—such as The Pearly Queen (1992), set in the Depression, in which a woman leaves her family to join a fanatical religious sect, and her role as mother is taken up by warm, generous Aunt Edie.

Harry Bowling, Maisie Mosco, R. F. Delderfield  JR