Pat Barr (25 April 1934 – 20 March 2018) was a British novelist, writer of social history and journalist.[1] She was born in Norwich, attended Norwich High School for Girls and studied English at the University of Birmingham.[1][2] She worked as a teacher at Yokohama International School in Japan.[1][2][3] She also studied for a master's degree from University College London.[1]
Career
In the 1960s Barr was Assistant Secretary of the National Old People's Welfare Council.[4] In this role she wrote The Elderly: Handbook on Care and Services (1968), and edited a book of older people's memories of their childhoods, I Remember: An Arrangement for Many Voices (1970).
Barr's history books include:
- The Coming of the Barbarians: A Story of Western Settlement in Japan, 1853-1870 (1967)
- The Deer Cry Pavilion: A Story of Westerners in Japan, 1868–1905 (1988)
- A Curious Life for a Lady: The Story of Isabella Bird, A Remarkable Victorian Traveller (1970)
- Foreign Devils: Westerners in the Far East, the Sixteenth Century to the Present Day (1970)
- To China With Love: The Lives and Times of Protestant Missionaries in China 1860-1900 (1972)
- The Memsahibs: The Women of Victorian India (1976)
- Taming the Jungle: The Men Who Made British Malaya (1977)
- The Dust in the Balance: British Women in India, 1905-1945 (1989)
Her first novel, written jointly with her husband John Barr under the pen name Laurence Hazard, was The Andean Murders (1960).[1]
Her other novels include:
- Chinese Alice (1981) (American title: Jade)
- Uncut Jade (1983)
- Kenjiro: A Novel of Nineteenth-Century Japan (1985)
- Coromandel (1988)
Four of her novels were bestsellers.[1]
Barr was active as a feminist and as a member of the Women in Media group.[1] She contributed a chapter, "Newspapers", to Is This Your Life?: Images of Women in the Media (1977), and wrote The Framing of the Female (1978). She also wrote for the feminist magazine Spare Rib.[citation needed]
Barr died in Norwich in 2018.[1]
References
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l Faulder, Carolyn (12 April 2018). "Pat Barr obituary". The Guardian. Retrieved 6 February 2019.
- ^ a b c Pat Barr (19 May 2011). The Memsahibs: The Women of Victorian India. Faber & Faber. pp. 196–. ISBN 978-0-571-27910-4. Retrieved 6 February 2019.
- ^ "The Coming of the Barbarians". Kirkus.
- ^ Barr, Pat (1970). I Remember: an arrangement for many voices. Macmillan.
Further reading
- (no name) (no date), "Pillow Talk in Old China", in The Washington Post
- Bobb, Dilip (1979), "Book review: The Memsahibs by Pat Barr", in India Today
- Verghese, Joseph (1976), "Book review of 'The Memsahibs: The Women of Victorian India' by Pat Barr", in India Today
- Sivadas, P S (no date), "Life of Early English Women in India", The Book Review Literary Trust
External links
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This page was last edited on 12 April 2023, at 01:38