The Old Nurse's Stocking-Basket

Eleanor Farjeon (13 February 1881—5 June 1965) was an English author of children's stories and plays, poetry, biography, history and satire. Several of her works had illustrations by Edward Ardizzone. Some of her correspondence has also been published. She won many literary awards and the Eleanor Farjeon Award for children's literature is presented annually in her memory by the Children's Book Circle, a society of publishers. She was the sister of the thriller writer Joseph Jefferson Farjeon.

Today Eleanor Farjeon's most widely known work is the children's hymn "Morning has Broken", written in 1931 to an old Gaelic tune associated with the Scottish village Bunessan. Her other popular hymn is the Advent carol "People, Look East!", usually sung to an old French melody, and a favourite with children's choirs. "Morning has Broken" appears under its correct title "A Morning Song (For the First Day of Spring)" in The Children's Bells (Oxford, 1957), which collects Farjeon's poems from many sources including the Martin Pippin books.

One of Farjeon's talents was to make history easy and memorable. In poetry that is varied, witty and picturesque, Farjeon presents the saints, the kings, the tyrants and the notable events in forms that fixed them in the minds of the young reader. The historical subjects of her poetry range from King Priam begging his son's body from Achilles in rhyming couplets, to King John being forced by the relentless barons to sign the Magna Carta, to Joseph the carpenter wondering over the future of the little Christ Child that he can hold in the span of his two hands.