Obituary: Margery Fisher

Margery Fisher

died on Christmas Eve 1992

Pam Royds and Margaret Clark write:

Margery Fisher was known to everyone as Angus; few, perhaps, knew why. One of the first people she met when she went up to Somerville in 1933 was James Fisher, her future husband. A friend of his commented on the unruly lock of black hair which always hung across her face. ‘You look like a Scottie dog,’ he said. ‘I’ll call you Angus.’ The name stuck.

Angus came down from Oxford with a first class degree in English literature and throughout her subsequent career she applied her considerable scholarship to the children’s books in which she had such a passionate interest and which she regarded as an integral part of the world of books. She wrote four standard works of reference on children’s literature, as well as reviewing regularly for the Sunday Times and writing articles for such specialist magazines as Signal.

But her unique achievement was her own journal, Growing Point, which she wrote, edited, produced and published single-handed for 30 years. What characterised her reviews was that in assessing a book for children she used the same criteria that held good for all books. In addition, she never judged a book in isolation; books would be grouped thematically, compared and contrasted as well as judged individually. There was also a page of ‘Reminders’ in each issue – books that were still worth reading even though they had been published decades before. In 1966, when Growing Point was four years old, Margery Fisher’s ‘Significant contribution to children’s books’ was recognised by the Children’s Book Circle and she was the first recipient of the Eleanor Farjeon Award.

One story sums up Angus’ special relationship with her reading – the pleasure she derived from it and her amazing memory. In 1922 she emigrated to New Zealand with her parents, and on the ship read, in instalments, a story about a party of dolls on an adventurous journey, led by an heroic wooden dog. Alas, the final instalment was missing. Years later, researching Margery Williams Bianco in the British Museum, ‘I saw an entry for a book called Poor Cecco. Something stirred at the back of my mind. I ordered the book and… half an hour later I knew, at last, how the story ended.’ How many of us would carry such a memory over 40 years?

Margery Fisher was loved by her many friends in the book world for her integrity, her generosity of mind and her determination to share with others the joy of being `intent upon reading’.

(BfK thanks the Bookseller for their permission to reprint this obituary, which was carried in their edition of 15 January 1993.)