Constance Savery

Born in 1897, in All Saints' Vicarage in Froxfield, Wiltshire, Constance Winifred Savery was the daughter of the Rev. John Manly Savery, and his wife, Constance Eleanor Harbord Savery. The family moved to Birmingham when she was nine years old, and Savery was educated there, at King Edward VI High School for Girls. She went on to Somerville College, Oxford, where she studied English, and was in the first cohort of woman students to be granted degrees, in 1920. She earned a Post-Graduate Diploma in Secondary Education from Birmingham University, and M.A. from Oxford in 1927, and taught briefly (and unhappily), before her mother's death necessitated a return to her father's household in Middleton-cum-Fordley, Suffolk, where she helped him with the parish work.

Savery never returned to teaching, earning her living from then on by writing. She published close to fifty books, and numerous short stories and articles, all informed by her deep Christian (Anglican) faith. She died in 1999.