Rosemary Joy Manning was a British author of both adult and children's books. Her best-known adult book was The Chinese Garden and she was also well-known for her popular Dragon children's series. She was also known by the pseudonyms Sarah Davys, Mary Voyle.

Education

She studied at Royal Holloway College from 1930 to 1933 and graduated with an honours degree in Classics

Classics

Classics is the branch of the Humanities comprising the languages, literature, philosophy, history, art, archaeology and other culture of the ancient Mediterranean world ; especially Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome during Classical Antiquity Classics (sometimes encompassing Classical Studies or...

.

Career

She first worked in an Oxford Street

Oxford Street

Oxford Street is a major thoroughfare in the City of Westminster in the West End of London, United Kingdom. It is Europe's busiest shopping street, as well as its most dense, and currently has approximately 300 shops. The street was formerly part of the London-Oxford road which began at Newgate,...

 department store

Department store

A department store is a retail establishment which satisfies a wide range of the consumer's personal and residential durable goods product needs; and at the same time offering the consumer a choice of multiple merchandise lines, at variable price points, in all product categories...

 then as a secretary In the 1930s, unhappy at work she suffered a nervous breakdown

Nervous breakdown

Mental breakdown is a non-medical term used to describe an acute, time-limited phase of a specific disorder that presents primarily with features of depression or anxiety.-Definition:...

 nd was unsuccessfully treated at the Maudsley Hospital

Maudsley Hospital

The Maudsley Hospital is a British psychiatric hospital in South London. The Maudsley is the largest mental health training institution in the country...

 by unsympathetic to her lesbianism. Her former headmistress offered her teaching work and she stayed as a teacher for a further 35 years. In 1950 she moved with a friend to Hampstead

Hampstead

Hampstead is an area of London, England, north-west of Charing Cross. Part of the London Borough of Camden in Inner London, it is known for its intellectual, liberal, artistic, musical and literary associations and for Hampstead Heath, a large, hilly expanse of parkland...

. north London to take over a long-established girls' preparatory school and became headmistress.

She later took up writing, After retirement, she came out

Coming out

Coming out is a figure of speech for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people's disclosure of their sexual orientation and/or gender identity....

as a lesbian during a television interview in 1980.

Dragon series

• Green Smoke (1957)
• Dragon in Danger (1959)
• The Dragon's Quest (1961)
• The Dragon in the Harbour (1980)