Ann Phillipa Pearce was bora in 1920 in the village of Great Shelford in Cambridgeshire, England. Her father was a flour-miller, and she was raised, along with her sister and two brothers, in the millhouse where she had been bom. Pearce continues to reside in that same house. Her childhood memories of the water-mill and of swimming and fishing in the river are reflected in the settings of some of her stories.

After graduating with honors from Girton College, Cambridge University, where she specialized in English and history, she worked as a civil servant until after World War II. She then took a job as a radio scriptwriter and producer for the British Broadcasting Company.

She later worked in the education department of Oxford University Press, and then as the first editor of children's books for Andre Deutsch, a London publishing house. In 1963 she married...