Clare Mallory is the pen name under which Winifred Constance McQuilkan Hall (25 September 1913 – 20 April 1991) wrote ten children's books published between 1947 and 1951.
Prior to her marriage she was headmistress of a day and boarding school in Dunedin, New Zealand, and in her short autobiography published in Hugh Anderson's The Singing Roads (Wentworth Press, 1965) she describes her first books as coming from stories she made up to entertain her students while they prepared food parcels for Britain.
Merry is 'second generation Tremaynes', Juliet travels 12,000 miles to attend the school her grandfather helped found, Leith thinks she is looking for a particular friend but discovers instead the value of belonging to a community.
Her admiration for Elder's book Evelyn Finds Herself was later reflected in Leith and Friends in which she uses a similar framework to explore the same themes of friendship and self-discovery.
In the early chapters the similarities between the two books are particularly apparent with sentences being transposed with slight or no alteration; she was a stranger in a strange land becomes She was a new girl in a strange land; a crowd of passengers from another train swarmed across the platform becomes a little crowd of passengers from another train hurried across the platform.