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Local Books and Authors
H.G. Wells, the first great writer of science fiction, moved to Worcester Park at the end of 1897 when he was 31: it was his agent who helped him find Heatherlea, 'a picturesque and insanitary house in the early Victorian style'. He described the neighbourhood as 'inhabited by amateur poultry fanciers and dog lovers with occasional literary men'. Heatherlea, at no. 41 The Avenue, has since been demolished. Wells, who never stayed in one place long, moved in March 1899. He wrote to a friend 'I am giving up the Worcester Park house for some obscure geological reason'. He had a small dig at the area in his novel Ann Veronica (1908), describing it as Morningside Park, 'a suburb that had not altogether, as people say, come off...There was first the Avenue, which ran in a consciously elegant curve from the railway station into an undeveloped wilderness of agriculture, and then there was the Pavement, the clump of shops about the post-office, and under the railway arch was a congestion of workmen's dwellings'. In The War of the Worlds Wells took a more comprehensive revenge on north-east Surrey, annihilating it under the heat rays of the invading Martians. In 1881, at the precocious age of 9, Aubrey Beardsley was circulating sketches of flowers and children from his home at 37 Ashley Road. Ten years later he was being advised to train professionally by Burne-Jones and by the next year he had joined a group whose most celebrated personality was Oscar Wilde. Beardsley's rise to fame was meteoric; his most important early work consisted of the illustrations to Wilde's Salome, and in April 1894 he began the artwork for the Yellow Book. Fifteen years after leaving Epsom, he returned to the town, but by this time he was dying of tuberculosis. In an effort to return to his roots, he stayed in two rooms at the Spread Eagle. Here he worked by candlelight before windows obscured by black curtains - the tones of natural daylight were too mellow for the dispassionate black lines and masses which were the hallmark of his style. He spent his last year working on the illustrations, largely obscene, for Aristophanes' Lysistrata. Harry Harper was the doyen of British aviation writers in the early 20th century, with titles such as Air Power, The Aeroplane In War, and Lords Of The Air. Writing was in the blood, for his father H.G. Harper (also an Epsom resident) had produced several sporting books. Harry Harper lived at Hatherton in Worple Road. His first interest was in ballooning, and he made a number of adventurous flights, but following a meeting with Lord Northcliffe he was commmissioned to write full-time. He met the Wright brothers, and was there to wave off Louis Bleriot on the first succesful Channel crossing; he also took part in early air mail experiments. During World War I he became a consultant to the British Government, and afterwards helped set up some of the early commercial airlines between London and Paris, the first Trans Empire flights, and the original giant flying boats. During World War II he supported the drive for increased aircraft production, and towards the end of his life he was writing about the possibilities opened up by space exploration. 'Kingfisher's ready to Sir Hubert!' were the famous first words of Colonel Daniel MacGregore Dare of the Interplanet Space Fleet, better known to millions of children as Dan Dare. He was the front page star of the new full-colour comic, the Eagle, which took off on 14th April 1950, launching British comics into a new age. Dan Dare was the creation of Frank Hampson, who was to work on the Eagle for 19 years. He also drew Tommy Walls the Wonder Boy, star of the first sponsored comic strip, which advertised Walls Ice Cream. After 1969 Hampson worked on the Lion, and then in 1977/8 for 2000 AD. He found studio space in 1a College Road. Each frame of the Dan Dare strip was based on photographs, which had to be carefully posed, so passers-by got used to seeing Hampson and his friends blazing away at each other outside the house with imaginary space guns. John Osborme, who achieved fame as one of the original angry young men, spent his childhood in Ewell and Stoneleigh. The author of Look Back In Anger, The Entertainer, Inadmissible Evidence and Deja Vu remembers the area well. 'For a few years I went to Ewell Boys School, a very Victorian establishment, Church of England, presided over by a fierce Welshman Mr. Jones who caned everyone almost all day from morning assembly onwards. The boys seemed pretty poor, even by the standards of the time. During the winter they all dressed in their elder brothers' clothes and boots, I remember, without socks. The market in Epsom was wonderful - I went there every Saturday and worked there for a while'. Osborne wrote about these early days in his autobiography, A Better Class Of Person, published by Faber & Faber in 1981. The first Epsom Grandstand housed a child whose name would become a household word - Isabella Beeton, as she would be after her marriage to a young London publisher. She was the woman whose Household Management, with its 1500 recipes, taught Victorian housewives how to cook. The eldest daughter of Benjamin and Elizabeth Mayson, Isabella came to Epsom when her widowed mother remarried Henry Dorling, the clerk of the racecourse. After a childhood spent in the gaunt building on the Downs, she moved to the family home and business premises at Ormonde House, at the end of the High Street on the upper High Street corner. At the age of 19, Isabella met the young, highly strung but ambitious publisher Samuel Beeton: and they were soon married. In 1856 she took on the Englishwoman's Domestic Magazine, and by 1859 she had begun writing Household Management, originally brought out by Samuel as a part-work, and only available as a complete book in 1860. It was a remarkable achievement as during the writing she went through difficult pregnancies - her first two children died in infancy, and she herself died at the age of 29 giving birth to her fourth child. Among the photographs in this exhibition were:
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