Robert Geoffrey Trease FRSL (11 August 1909 – 27 January 1998) was a prolific British writer who published 113 books, mainly for children, between 1934 and 1997, starting with Bows Against the Barons and ending with Cloak for a Spy in 1997. His work has been translated into 20 languages. He is best known for the children's novel Cue for Treason (1940
Trease served as Chairman of the Children's Writer's Group from 1962-63; Chairman of the Society of Authors from 1974-98; and Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, from 1979.
His grandfather was a historian, and was one of the main influences on his work.
Trease's children's historical novels reflect his insistence on historically correct backgrounds, which he meticulously researched. His ground-breaking study Tales Out of School (1949) pioneered the idea that children's literature should be a serious subject for study and debate. When he began his career, his radical viewpoint was a change from the conventional and often jingoistic tone of most children's literature of the time, and he was one of the first authors who deliberately set out to appeal to both boys and girls and to feature strong leading characters of both sexes.
Life and work
Trease was born in Nottingham in 1909, third and youngest son of George Trease (1873–1932), a wine merchant, and his wife Florence Dale (1874–1955), a doctor's daughter. His eldest brother, George, was seven years older, the middle brother, William, older by three years. His elder brother, George E. Trease, became Professor of Pharmacognosy at Notting University and an uncle, George F Sleggs (Fred) was a journalist and later a biology professor at first, Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia and later at the University of Chicago.
Education
Trease's first school was the small private school, the co-educational Ashbourne House kept by the 'Misses Rogers". However, Turpin left in 1925, around the period Trease was 'streamed'.
During this time Trease read his father's Daily Mail, but also attended political meetings in Nottingham of the Labour Party and the Communist party, with an eye to becoming a cub journalist on the Nottingham Guardian (his Greek tutor, who had rubbished this idea, was A. D. Whitehorn the father of the journalist Katherine Whitehorn). However during that time Trease attended debates at the Oxford Union, and put his conversion to socalism down to a speech by the charismatic Labour Minister, Oswald Mosely.
After leaving the Settlement, Trease worked first for a Book Club start up (which failed) and then for a commercial 'puff' paper, where he stayed from 1930-32. and after basic training, was assigned to the Educational Corps. He served most of his time in Warwickshire with a break for an international residential course in Oxford, and was posted to India in July 1945. He was demobilised in July 1946. Trease helped lead army discussion groups during the June 1945 election campaign. During this time he wrote Trumpets in the West (1947)
Writing
Trease described his own childhood reading as "a diet of classist and racist historical adventure" but in 1933, he came across a translation of a Russian book titled Moscow has a Plan, in which a Soviet author dramatised the First five-year plan for young readers. Inspired by this, in 1934 Trease wrote Bows Against the Barons, published by Martin Lawrence Ltd. the official publisher of the Communist Party (it merged with Wishart in 1936 to become Lawrence and Wishar<nowiki/>t). Bows Against the Barons was a left-wing update of Robin Hood that showcased a radical approach to historical literature for young people. It sold around 3000 copies in the UK. It was the publication of this book in Moscow that led to the Trease's travelling to the USSR for a year as members of the Co-operative Publishing Society of Foreign Workers. The couple's experiences on this trip became the material for Red Comet (1937), a lightly fictionalised children's adventure and travelogue.
An enduring belief in equality and fairness is a theme in many of Geoffrey Trease's books, as are links between the historical settings of his novels and contemporary issues.
Trease wrote two plays, After the Tempest which won both the overall prize and the Best New Play at the Welwyn Drama Festival (1938) and Colony (1938) for Unity Theatre. After the Tempest was a rare foray into science fiction; set on an island in the future the rescued aristocratic family and their servants discover that the outside world has had a revolution (pub. J. W. Marriot, The Best One Act Plays of 1938). Colony told the story of a Sugar workers's strike in the West Indies. The strike leader was played by Robert Adams, a British Guyanase actor and founder of the Negro Repertory Arts Theatre, one of the first Black theatre companies in the UK. The play was a critical success and ran for five weeks in house; plans were made to move it to the West End, but the start of the Second World War led to the closure of the theatres, and the play was never revived.
Bows Against the Barons was translated into Russian and sold immensely well there; his next work, Comrades for the Charter was less successful but Cue for Treason in 1940 proved enduringly popular and remains his best known work. His subjects cover a wide range of historical periods, such as The Crown of Violet, set in Ancient Greece, The Red Towers of Granada, Middle Ages, The Hills of Varna, Renaissance Europe, Cue for Treason and Cloak for a Spy, Elizabethan England, Fire on the Wind and Popinjay Stairs, Restoration London, Thunder of Valmy, French Revolution, The White Nights of St Petersburg, the Bolshevik Revolution and Tomorrow Is a Stranger, World War II. Many were translated for foreign markets, including Asia and Europe. In the United States he won the New York Herald Tribune Book Award for the Children's Spring Festival 1966 for This is Your Century.
He married Marian Boyer (1906–1989) in 1933 and they spent most of their marriage in Colwall, near The Downs School, Great Malvern. They had one daughter, Jocelyne, and moved to Bath to be closer to her, shortly before Marian's death.
See also
- Rosemary Sutcliff
- Henry Treece