Ann Thwaite Biography

British writer, born in Hampstead, London, educated at St Hilda's College, Oxford. Her experiences of Tokyo, where she travelled with her husband Anthony Thwaite in 1956, gave rise to her first book, The Young Traveller in Japan (1958). Her early works for younger readers include The House in Turner Square (1960) and Toby Stays with Jane (1962), the first of a series of successful ‘Toby and Jane’ stories. Waiting for the Party (1974), her biography of Frances Hodgson Burnett, was followed by the highly acclaimed Edmund Gosse: A Literary Landscape (1984), which placed her in the first rank of contemporary biographers, and A. A. Milne: His Life (1990). Thwaite has also edited various books, which include My Oxford (1977) and Portraits from Life (1991) by Edmund Gosse.