Mollie Hunter

Maureen Mollie Hunter McIlwraith (30 June 1922 – 31 July 2012) was a Scottish writer known as Mollie Hunter. She wrote fantasy for children, historical stories for young adults, and realistic novels for adults. Many of her works are inspired by Scottish history, or by Scottish or Irish folklore, with elements of magic and fantasy.

Life

Born and raised near Edinburgh in the small village of Longniddry, her final years were spent in Inverness. A portrait of her hangs in the Scottish National Portrait Gallery.

Hunter's debut was Patrick Kentigern Keenan, published by Blackie and Son in 1963 with illustrations by Charles Keeping. In the U.S. it was published in 1963 as The Smartest Man in Ireland.

Awards

For The Stronghold Mollie Hunter won the 1974 Carnegie Medal from the Library Association, recognising the year's best children's book by a British subject. The same novel, published in The Netherlands as "Een toren tegen de romeinen" won the "Zilveren Griffel" (Silver Pen) award in 1978 for children's writing.

She won the Phoenix Award from the Children's Literature Association in 1992, recognising A Sound of Chariots (1972) as the best children's book published twenty years earlier that did not win a major award.