Miss Bianca by Margery Sharp

Margery Sharp was born in Wiltshire in 1905 as Clara Margery Melita Sharp. She spent part of her childhood in Malta before returning to England with her family and enrolling at Streatham Hill High School. She went on to study at Bedford College in London, where she said her time was nearly totally devoted to journalism and campus activities. Still based in London, she began her literary career at the age of twenty-one, contributing fiction and non-fiction to many of the most prestigious publications of the time in both Britain and America. Major Geoffrey Castle, an aviation engineer, married her in 1938. She was a busy Army Education Lecturer when World War II broke out, but she continued her own work during and after the war.

In addition to the 'Miss Bianca' children's series, which was animated by Disney as The Rescuers in 1977, many of her adult stories were the foundation for Hollywood movie screenplays. Margery Sharp went on to write 22 adult novels (not 26, as some sources claim), as well as several short tales and novellas (many of which were only published in magazines) and various works for children. She died one year after her husband in Suffolk, in 1991.