Biography

Antonia Forest was a pseudonym used by Patricia Rubinstein, born in 1915 to parents of Russian and Irish extraction. She trained as a journalist and then become a civil servant although she always planned to become a writer. Although AF first wrote a children’s book, she hoped to use this as a stepping-stone to a career as an adult novelist. The adult fiction never emerged, but she wrote thirteen children’s books, all but one featuring the likeable Marlow family. Some were school stories, some were not and two were set at the turn of the turn of the 16th century. This variety is one of the things that has helped her books to maintain their popularity. School stories, however well written, can seem a little two-dimensional, but to see the family as a whole during the school holidays gives more depth. Her school stories are unpredictable – I re-read them in a way that I might not re-read Enid Blyton’s Malory Towers series.

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Books

To search or browse her books in our Antonia Forest catalogue, at the Advanced Book Exchange, use the search boxes below.

   

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Links

Forest was an intensely private person and even her real name was not known beyond her close circle of friends until after her death in 2003. A detailed biography will be published in 2005.

One of the most comprehensive sites devoted to Antonia Forest includes an interview by Sue Sims from 1995 – well worth reading as she rarely gave interviews. The best of her obituaries was in the Telegraph.

If you know of any interesting links, please let us know.