Barbara Euphan Todd's reputation in children's literature rests primarily on her creation of one striking character, the animated scarecrow Worzel Gummidge. Though Todd published more than thirty-five works--novels, stories, games, poems, and plays--under three different names, the Scarecrow of Scatterbrook and his rural friends brought her modest recognition during her lifetime and considerable fame as television characters after her death.

Born in Doncaster, Yorkshire, to Anglican minister Thomas Todd and Alice Maud Mary (Bentham) Todd, Barbara Euphan Todd spent her youth in the rural Hampshire village of Soberton. Educated at a girls' school in Guildford, Surrey, she published during the 1920s many children's stories in collaboration with other writers. Her stepdaughter, Mrs. U. V. G. Betts, recalls enjoying one of these tales, The Very Good Walkers (1925), before becoming acquainted with Barbara Todd as her stepmother. Todd married John Graham Bower in 1932.

The couple moved to Blewbury, a rural...