Beverly Cleary

Beverly Cleary (1916-2021) was an American children's author whose funny, everyday stories about Henry Huggins, Ramona Quimby and Ralph S. Mouse began with her first book in 1950.

She was born on 12 April 1916 in McMinnville, Oregon, and worked as a children's librarian in Yakima, Washington, and then as a post librarian at an army hospital in Oakland, California, during the Second World War. Her first book, Henry Huggins, was published by William Morrow in 1950 with illustrations by Louis Darling and is set on Klickitat Street in Portland, Oregon. Henry's neighbour Ramona went on to lead her own series, from Beezus and Ramona (1955) and Ramona the Pest (1968) to Ramona Quimby, Age 8 (1981), Ramona Forever (1984) and Ramona's World (1999). The motorbike-riding mouse Ralph appeared in The Mouse and the Motorcycle (1965), Runaway Ralph (1970) and Ralph S. Mouse (1982).

Dear Mr. Henshaw (1983) won the Newbery Medal in 1984, and Ramona and Her Father and Ramona Quimby, Age 8 were Newbery Honor books. She received the Laura Ingalls Wilder Award (1975), a National Book Award for Ramona and Her Mother (1981), was named a Library of Congress Living Legend in 2000 and received the National Medal of Arts in 2003. Newsweek reported 91 million copies of her books sold worldwide by 2006. She died in Carmel-by-the-Sea, California, on 25 March 2021, aged 104.

For collectors. Her books were first published by William Morrow of New York, the publisher Wikipedia's bibliography gives for her titles from Henry Huggins (1950) to Ramona's World (1999), and Open Library records Morrow editions of her early books. The 1950 Henry Huggins, her debut, and the Newbery Medal winner Dear Mr. Henshaw (1983) are the key titles. Open Library also records British editions from Hamish Hamilton for books such as Henry and Beezus and Beezus and Ramona.