author
Hannah Jane Locker-Lampson
Known for writing imaginative children's stories in the late Victorian period, this English author is best remembered for What the Blackbird Said. She also moved in a literary family circle that linked her to poet Frederick Locker-Lampson and to a household known for books and collecting.
1 Audiobook
What the Blackbird said A story in four chirps
by Hannah Jane Locker-Lampson
About the author
Born in 1846, she was the only daughter of Sir Curtis Miranda Lampson and later married the poet Frederick Locker, who eventually took the combined family name Locker-Lampson. Archival and reference sources identify her as a children's writer, and public-domain listings preserve a number of her works.
Her best-known book is What the Blackbird Said: A Story in Four Chirps, first published in the 1880s and illustrated by Randolph Caldecott. The title gives a good sense of her appeal: playful, literary, and closely tuned to the natural world, with the kind of gentle imagination that still suits classic read-aloud listening.
She died in 1915. Although she is not as widely remembered as some of her contemporaries, surviving editions and library records show a writer whose work formed part of the rich tradition of nineteenth-century children's literature.