Remembering the writer Eva Ibbotson – a centenary celebration

Eva Ibbotson in her study in Jesmond, Newcastle

The 21st of January 2025 marks the 100th anniversary of Eva Ibbotson’s birth. To this day, the Austrian-born British writer is loved and known for her work in children’s literature and novels for adults. Her books have been translated into 80 languages and continue to captivate children and adults alike, with huge markets in the United Kingdom, the United States, and Germany. It is undeniable that Eva Ibbotson’s Austrian heritage played a significant role in shaping her life and writing. Her early experiences in Austria and complicated childhood profoundly influenced her perspective and literary choices. This is especially true in how she portrayed themes of displacement, exile, and the search for belonging in her stories. Although Eva Ibbotson moved to Britain and became a British citizen, her Austrian heritage and her journey as an immigrant remained a central aspect of her identity.

Early Life

Eva Ibbotson with her mother Anna Gmeyner

Eva Ibbotson was born in Vienna in 1925 to the writer and playwright Anna Gmeyner and the physician Bertholt Wiesner—a union of two brilliant minds at odds with the Gmeyner family. Anna’s socialist views opposed the lifestyle of the affluent family she grew up in, and Berthold detested his wife’s bourgeois background.

The couple moved to Berlin when Eva was only 1 year old to pursue their careers. It was a hard life due to financial difficulties and a period of illness for Eva. When Bertholt moved to Edinburgh, Eva and her mum initially remained in Berlin but later followed; however, their relationship had irretrievably broken down. Eventually, Anna decided to return to Berlin. As a result, Eva was sent to live with her grandparents in Vienna. They sent her to a convent school in the village of Hallstatt, a picturesque Austrian mountainside village.

Austria: Separation from Parents

Although Eva lived in Austria and saw her grandparents and aunts regularly, her move to Austria marked an almost permanent separation from her parents. This lifelong desire for a stable family unit would only eventually be fulfilled by creating her own family unit with her future husband Alan Ibbotson. He later became a lecturer of Entomology at Newcastle University, and the couple had four children: Lalage, Toby, Piers, and Justin. Although Eva Ibbotson’s children’s books are generally more fantastical, they frequently explore themes of family, identity, and the tension between the known and the unknown—all issues that can be linked to her journey.

Eva Ibbotson as a child

Childhood in Britain


Aged 8, Eva left Austria to live with her father in Edinburgh – a new country, a new language, and a governess, all of which came as a huge shock. Fleeing Berlin from the Nazis and having met her second husband, a Russian émigré, in Paris, Eva’s mother Anna moved to London in 1934.

Eva spent most of her childhood and youth feeling unwanted, commuting between her scientifically minded father and her intellectual, creative, but slightly chaotic mother, wanting to please both. However, her life became more settled when her parents sent her to a progressive boarding school in Devon called Dartington Hall. It provided her with brilliant teachers, stability, security, and intellectual stimulation that “saved her life,” as Eva would later put it.

In the years that followed, she was, on the one hand, immersed in Jewish immigrant community life in London when she visited her mother. Many immigrants had fled Austria and Germany and tried to make a life for themselves in Belsize Park, anxiously waiting for news of friends and family who had not yet escaped the terror of the Nazis. The Jewish immigrant community had the warmth and humor that enabled the immigrants to cope. On the other hand, Eva would visit her father, who had also remarried and acquired a house on Ensay – a small island in the Hebrides and a landscape that would feature particularly in Eva’s children’s book Island of the Aunts (1999).

University and Marriage

By the time Eva left school, her extended family consisted of refugees, Austrians, Russians, and British family members. Many of them were speaking different languages, creating a rich tapestry of cultural backgrounds on which she could draw as a writer. However, writing came much later to Eva as she first decided to pursue a degree in Biology mainly to please her scientific father. Although a brilliant student, she was not a natural scientist. She met and fell in love with Alan Ibbotson, a young scientist, and they would have a long and loving marriage as he gave Eva the love and stability she had longed for all her life.

The emerging Writer

When the family moved to Newcastle, Eva started to write – first short stories for women’s magazines, then screenplays. Her first children’s book was published in 1975. A few years later, she successfully moved into adult romantic novels using the backdrop of the Austrian-Hungarian Empire in Madensky Square (1988) and the plight of Jewish Austrian refugees as a topic in The Morning Gift (1993), in which the dashing scientist who falls in love with a hapless student rather resembled her husband, Alan. Then, there were the Russian stories that came from her stepfather, Yasha.

Eva’s best-selling book to this day, Journey to the River Sea (2001), was a tribute to her late husband Alan, who loved ecology and the natural world. The book won several prizes and remains one of her most famous books. And the story of this book? It is the story of an orphaned girl from England who is sent with her governess to live and start a new life with distant relatives, the Carter family, in the Amazon rainforest near the River Amazon, courageously building her new life.

Interview with Ute Wegmann in 2005

In an interview given to Ute Wegmann in 2005 and broadcasted by the Deutschlandfunk, Eva Ibbotson talked about the rich tapestry of her life, the loss of her mother tongue, her homeland, her culture, her favourite foods from home, which included Kartoffeln mit Butter und Salz (potatoes with butter and salt). In the interview, she also talked about her mother, the playwright Anna Gmeyner, whom she admired greatly. Being asked about her Jewish background, she stressed that she had not even consciously known that she was Jewish until the Nazis came into power, as certain Jewish traditions and customs were just a part of daily life without being verbalized in the family. She concluded that her family fell apart when Europe fell apart, and she just had to cope. She illustrated this with a Jewish quote: Wenn du Hunger hast – sing. Wenn du verletzt bist – lache (If you are hungry – sing. If you are hurt – laugh). However, she insisted that her fictional characters must have a happy ending – ALWAYS!

Literary success

Eva Ibbotson’s literary success did not come overnight—it was driven by determination, hard work, a talent for observation, a great sense of humour, an affinity for human emotions, and a loving husband who supported her.
Eva’s adult novels often include elements of European history, class distinctions, and the effects of war, reflecting her own experiences of leaving Austria and the upheaval caused by WWII. The cultural richness of Austria and her Jewish roots also provided a backdrop for her works, with characters who often find themselves straddling different worlds, much like Eva herself. Eva’s Austrian heritage was essential to her identity, influencing her personal journey and storytelling.

Acknowledgement

Many thanks to Eva Ibbotson’s children, Lalage Bosanquet and Justin Ibbotson, for letting me read their account of their mother’s fascinating life and to Ute Wegmann and the Deutschlandfunk for the 2005 interview with Eva Ibbotson. It is a great privilege to have learned about Eva Ibbotson’s life after reading many of her adult novels and reading her children’s books to my daughter. Through the family I learned about Eva’s mother, the playwright Anna Gmeyner, whose impressive play Ende einer Verhandlung (End of a trial) I saw with her family in Meiningen in September 2024.


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