Tuesday, October 07, 2014

Mary Cadogan obituary

Literary historian, broadcaster and writer with a fascination for children's literature whose 1976 book You're a Brick, Angela! was a big hit and became a standard text

Mary Cadogan
'Noël Coward talked about the potency of "cheap music". Well. I'm a great believer in the potency of "cheap literature",' Mary Cadogan once said

Mary Cadogan, who has died aged 86, was a literary historian, chronicling the history of children's books, romantic and detective fiction and many other aspects of the popular culture of the last two centuries. A writer, critic and broadcaster, she was a passionate advocate for the pleasures of times past, who delighted in passing on her love of writers and their work, as if sitting beside the child-inside-us-all and sharing some much-thumbed book or comic that had amused her, thrilled her or caught and excited her imagination.

Born in Ealing, west London, she was the daughter of Thomas Summersby, a policeman, and his wife Ivy, a nurse. The family later moved to Kent where Mary was educated at Bromley county grammar school for girls, matriculating in 1944
More

You're a Brick, Angela!, by Mary Cadogan and Patricia Craig
  You're a Brick, Angela!, 1976, by Mary Cadogan and Patricia Craig 

No comments: