Elfrida Vipont

Elfrida Vipont Brown was born in Manchester, England in 1902, into an active Quaker heritage. She attended schools in Manchester and York, not unlike “Chesterham High School” and “Heryot School” in The Lark in the Morn. After a time of reading history at Manchester University, she realized that what she really wanted to do was to sing, and she went on to study singing with teachers in London, Paris and Leipzig. In 1926 she married R.P. Foulds, a research technologist.

During World War II she was headmistress of an Evacuation School set up by Quakers in Manchester at Liverpool and Yealand Conyers, a small village in Lancashire, where children from those cities and from further afield were sent for safety, away from the wartime bombing raids. Three of her own four daughters were pupils at this school.

Elfrida Foulds had already published three books for children before the war, and after it was over she became a writer in many fields, with interests (reflected in her “Lark” books) in history, Quakerism and music. She wrote nearly two dozen novels, stories and anthologies for children and young adults. The Lark in the Morn and The Lark on the Wing are among the best of many fine books. The Lark on the Wing won the Carnegie Medal in 1951.

Writing under the names of Elfrida Vipont and Charles Vipont, Mrs. Foulds lived for many years at Yealand Conyers, while traveling world wide for Quaker committees and lecturing in schools and libraries. She died in 1992.

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