Adshead, Gladys L.

Gladys Lucy Adshead, author of numerous twentieth-century children's books, as well as a successful teacher and school administrator, was born to James Frederick and Bertha Wilson Groome Adshead in West Didsbury, Manchester, England, on April 25, 1896. Her father inculcated in her a love of reading and openly avowed desire that Adshead would write children's books one day. In 1906, with the birth of her second brother, she concluded at age ten that she wanted to be a teacher for small children. After receiving her degree in England at the Froebel Educational Institute, Roehampton, London in 1916, Adshead taught in British private schools before emigrating to the United States in 1921, receiving her naturalization in 1939. Her teaching career proved eclectic in the United States. She organized the first open-air free nursery school in Baltimore. Outside the classroom she read stories to children in libraries, bookstores, and independent organizations. In her later years Adshead took an increasingly administrative role in education. Adshead identified her writing as getting "inside a child's skin," writing characters identified with the children in her own life. She died June 22, 1985 in Alameda County, California.

From the description of Gladys Lucy Adshead papers, 1937-1965. (University of Oregon Libraries). WorldCat record id: 53148021

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