Barbara Ker Wilson

Barbara Ker Wilson (24 September 1929 – 10 September 2020) was an English-born Australian novelist. She is credited as the person who "discovered" Paddington Bear. She wrote over twenty books and collated collections of stories. She gained awards for helping other writers.

Life Wilson was born in Sunderland in 1929. Her parents were Margaret (born Rogers) and William Ker Wilson. Her father was an aeronautical engineer who wrote on that subject. After she attended the North London Collegiate School in 1938, she entered publishing in 1949 at Oxford University Press where she became an assistant editor. She went on to work for Bodley Head and in 1957 she moved to Collins where she discovered a draft by Michael Bond. He had created a book for children featuring the talking bear from Peru named Paddington Bear.

In 1954, she created the anthology Scottish Folk-Tales and Legends. The first of the twenty novels she wrote was Path-Through-the-Woods which was published in 1958. She and her husband moved to Adelaide in 1964 after the 1963 winter to find a better climate. Her husband obtained a job as a composer in Residence at the University of Adelaide. The couple had divorced by 1978.

In 2008, she published The Lost Years of Jane Austen which imagines Austen visiting an Australian prison colony.

Ker Wilson died in Bowral, New South Wales on 10 September 2020, survived by her daughters and two grandchildren.

Awards and honors For her work in children's literature, she received the Pixie O'Harris Award in 1997. Five years later she was made a Member of the Order of Australia noting the support she had given to emerging writers.