Alison Uttley

English children's writer, 1884–1976

Alison Jane Uttley Litt. D. (17 December 1884 – 7 May 1976), née Taylor, was an English writer of over 100 books. She is best known for a children's series about Little Grey Rabbit and Sam Pig. She is also remembered for a pioneering time slip novel for children, A Traveller in Time, about the imprisoned Mary, Queen of Scots.

Born in Cromford and brought up on a farm in rural Derbyshire, Alison Taylor was educated at the Lea School in Holloway and the Lady Manners School in Bakewell, where she developed a love for science that led to a scholarship to Manchester University to read physics. In 1906 she became the second woman honours graduate of the university and made a lifetime friendship with the charismatic Professor Samuel Alexander. Around 1910 she was living at The Old Vicarage, King Street, Knutsford. In 1911 she married James Arthur Uttley. In 1914 she had her only child, John Corin Uttley, who became a public schoolmaster. the Uttleys lived at Downs House, 13 Higher Downs, Bowdon, Cheshire, which has a blue plaque commemorating her. In 1938 she moved to Beaconsfield, also the home of children's author Enid Blyton, whom Uttley did not admire.

In later life Uttley said that she began writing to support herself and her son financially after she was widowed, but in fact her first book was published in 1929, before her husband's death. Uttley recorded that one inspiration was a meeting in 1927 with Professor Alexander at a painting exhibition in Altrincham, at which he confused her with another ex student and asked if she was still writing. and she has been the subject of two biographies.