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Philippa Pearce entwines realistic and imaginary landscapes and characters to create some of the most memorable fantasy of modern times. Her prevalent theme of the importance of friendship is explored through believable adventure plots. Secrets--happy, sad, adventurous, or horrible--dominate her stories and bring the reader insight into the power and necessity of communication. Images of loneliness and the ways human beings (and occasionally animals) combat loneliness complement the motif of secrecy in Pearce's fiction.
Ann Philippa Pearce was born in Great Shelford, five miles south of Cambridge. She was the fourth and youngest child of a miller, Ernest Alexander Pearce, and his wife, Gertrude Alice (Ramsden) Pearce, and grew up in a mill house on the banks of the River Cam. The river, the house, and the garden of Pearce's childhood appear in Minnow on the Say (1954), Tom's Midnight Garden (1958), and several other works. According to Pearce, "the midnight garden and its house are based closely on the mill-house garden and the mill house as [my] father--who was born there--knew them as a boy."
Pearce was educated at the Pearse Girls' School in Cambridge and then attended Girton College, Cambridge, where she read English and history, completing the B.A., with honors, in 1942.
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