Averil Douglas Opperman

Although While It Is Yet Day is her first biography, Averil Douglas Opperman is a journalist of wide experience.

She grew up in Dublin in a Quaker family and started her writing career in The Irish Times. As a staff reporter she covered everything from fires and weddings to parliament and the courts and was also appointed equestrian correspondent. She travelled extensively reporting for newspapers, magazines and Ireland’s radio station, RTE.

Since living in England, she has written on various subjects in a freelance capacity and produced an award-winning local history book. A childhood fascination with Elizabeth Fry inspired her to bring the Quaker reformer’s story to a twenty-first century readership.

"When I was a child growing up in a Quaker family in Dublin, my father gave me a copy of Janet Whitney’s book about Elizabeth Fry. Janet’s interpretation of this remarkable woman, combining fact and a little whimsy, has fascinated me ever since."

In Averil's Words

Elizabeth Fry was one of the first women in history to achieve fame for her causes within the confines of a 19th century marriage. This she did by successfully combining a busy home life and eleven children with hard work, determination and a sense of purpose. Coming from a wealthy family helped.

Recently I have been struck by similarities between her times and our own. So I decided to bring Elizabeth’s life – her work, her family, her pacifism, and her difficult choices – to a new generation. It will show how in some surprising ways things have not changed much in the 170 years since her death.

She would be sad that women still struggle to balance their work and home lives satisfactorily and without guilt. The widespread illiteracy around the world would sadden her too. What would she think of the need for a Modern Slavery Act in 2015? She and her friends William Wilberforce and brother in law Sir Thomas Fowell Buxton hoped that servitude would be abolished forever with the Slavery Act of 1833.

And what would she think of prison reform today? She abhorred the cruelty, crowding and filth in the prisons she visited in the early 19th century. When she first entered the notorious Newgate Prison in January 1813, she recorded “gloom, bad smells, pandemonium.” She had never before seen “a mass of women, by the hundreds, reduced to the level of wild beasts.” She felt that prison should be an opportunity for rehabilitation and reform, for education and paid employment. There should be no idleness and no extra punishment.

I have tried to keep this Elizabeth Fry biography light to appeal to young people and those who are not avid readers of history or biography. I hope it inspires a new generation and gets people talking about Elizabeth Fry and learning more about her before she vanishes further into history when her face comes off our £5 note in 2016.”