Jacqueline Wilson - Life and Education

Life and Education

Jacqueline Wilson was born in Bath, England, in 1945, Her father, Harry Aitken, was a civil servant; her mother, Margaret Aitken (later changed to Biddy) was a housewife, having various jobs as a dinnerlady and a bakery worker. Jacqueline spent most of her childhood in Kingston upon Thames, where she went to Latchmere Primary School. She was an imaginative child who enjoyed both reading and inventing stories. She particularly enjoyed books by Noel Streatfeild, as well as American classics like Little Women and What Katy Did. As early as aged seven, she filled Woolworths notebooks with stories of her imaginary games. At the age of nine she wrote her first "novel" which was 18 sides long. That story, Meet the Maggots, was about a family with seven children. Although she was good at English, she had no interest in mathematics; she would often stare out the window and imagine rather than pay attention to the class, leading her final-year teacher at Latchmere to nickname her "Jacky Daydream". Jacqueline Wilson later used the nickname as the title of the first stage of her autobiography.

She did very well at school. After Latchmere, she attended Coombe Girls' School, which she visits to this day. Kingston University has named the main hall at its Penrhyn Road campus for her, "Jacqueline Wilson Hall". After leaving school at age 16, she began training as a secretary but then applied to work with the Dundee-based publishing company DC Thomson on a new girls' magazine, Jackie. DC Thomson offered the 17-year-old a job after she penned a piece on the horrors of teen discos. She fell in love with a printer named Millar Wilson. When he joined the police force, the couple moved south for his work, marrying in 1965 when Jackie was 19. Two years later, they had a daughter, Emma. The marriage was dissolved in 2004 after her husband left her.

When Wilson focused on writing, she completed a few crime fiction novels before dedicating herself to children's books. At the age of 40, she took A-level English and earned a grade A. She had mixed success with about 40 books before the breakthrough to fame in 1991 with The Story of Tracy Beaker, published by Doubleday.Over 30 million copies were printed and sold

Two decades later, Wilson lives in a Victorian villa in Kingston upon Thames. It is filled with books; her library of some 15,000 books extends into the outbuilding at the bottom of her garden. She remains a keen reader, completing a book a week despite her hectic schedule. Her favourite writers for adults include Katherine Mansfield and Sylvia Plath. She also surrounds herself with old-fashioned childhood objects such as a rocking horse and antique dolls, and has a unique taste in clothes and jewellery, being known for wearing black clothes and an array of large rings. She swims 50 lengths each day before breakfast.

Wilson is patron of the charity Momentum in Kingston upon Thames, which helps Surrey children undergoing treatment for cancer (and their families), and also patron of The Friends of Richmond Park.