Christine Chaundler


Christine Chaundler was a prolific English children's author, who also wrote stories for boys as Peter Martin. Some of her hundreds of short stories were broadcast by the BBC.

Life

Born in Biggleswade, Bedfordshire, the daughter of a solicitor, Henry Chaundler, and Constance Julia Chaundler, she was educated at Queen Anne's School, Caversham, and St Winifred's School, Llanfairfechan. Apart from a brief stint in the Land Army in World War I, Chaundler worked in editorial jobs as she built her writing career. By 1920, her earnings had allowed her to build a house on the Sussex Downs, where she lived until her death in 1972. She never married.

Career

1n 1910, Chaundler adapted Sleeping Beauty as a children's play that was performed at the Biggleswade Town Hall. In 1912, she received 10s 6d, her first earnings, for a prize poem published in Girls' Realm. She was a sub-editor for Little Folks from 1914 to 1917, before serving briefly in the Land Army. After the war, she edited juvenile books for James Nisbet and Company until 1922. During the 1930s, she reviewed children's books for The Quiver. She continued to write and became a prolific author of children's novels, for boys under her pseudonym "Peter Martin" and for girls under her own name. A census of young girls conducted by the Western Mail in 1927 ranked Chaundler sixth among popular authors. Although she was bested by Dickens, Shakespeare, and Kipling, she was listed above Alcott and Stevenson. She wrote hundreds of short stories for magazines and children's annuals, some of which were broadcast over the BBC's Children's Hour. However, the market for these types of children's books had changed by the late 1940s and Chaundler turned to reviewing books, reading books for publishers, and marketing her short stories to the BBC.