Norah Burke (1907–1976)

Norah Burke was born in Bedfordshire, England, during the days of the British Raj, to a family of that had resided in India for many years.
Her father Redmond St. George Burke, was a forest officer in the Imperial Forest Service there. The family returned to India when Norah was an infant, and they spent most of her childhood traveling around the jungles for her father's work.

The challenges of this way of life made education difficult, but she read as much as she could, and even wrote and edited her own children's magazine.

In 1919, she returned to England to attend a school in Devonshire. She published her first novel, Dark Road, in 1933, drawing on her own background for the book's settings. It was followed by Merry England (1934), an historical novel, and The Scarlet Vampire (1936).

In 1935, she co-authored with her father Jungle Days: A Book of Big Game Hunting, based on her family's hunting trips in India.

By 1956, she had published some 16 novels, some under pseudonyms such as Andre Lamour, and her short stories and articles had appeared in more than 100 periodicals. Her work was published in many countries in Europe, Australia, the USA, and Canada. In 1954, she won the New York Herald Tribune World Short Story Contest.

Her other autobiographical books included Jungle Child (1956), Tiger Country (1965) and Eleven Leopards (1965). She also wrote about wildlife in King Todd (1963), The Midnight Forest (1966) and numerous short stories.
A collection of her stories was published as Jungle Picture: A Picture of the Vast Forests of India, along with the Foot-hills of the Himalayas, in 1960. She married Henry Humphrey R. Methwold Walrond, a lawyer, with whom she had two sons.