Catherine Storr, Lady Balogh (née Catherine Cole; 21 July 1913 – 8 January 2001,[1]) was an English children's writer, best known for her novel Marianne Dreams and for a series of books about a wolf ineptly pursuing a young girl, beginning with Clever Polly and the Stupid Wolf.
[4] She went on to study English literature at Newnham College, Cambridge, and at first pursued a career as a novelist without success.
A novel for slightly older children Marianne Dreams (1958) is more disturbing:[8] a young girl, being tutored at home during sickness, travels in dreams to the house she has drawn while awake and meets there another pupil of her tutor; in a moment of jealousy she draws stones with eyes around the house to keep him prisoner and must then undo her actions.
It was made into the TV series Escape Into Night and the film Paperhouse; Storr was not fond of the latter, and particularly disliked the ending.
An opera for schools, Flax into Gold: The Story of Rumpelstiltskin (1957), was written in collaboration with her brother, the composer Hugo Cole.