The Worst Witch
Each book covers one term at the school. There are two terms each year: the Winter term, from September to January, and the Summer term, from March to July. In "First Prize for the Worst Witch", the most recent book, Mildred is in the Summer term of her fourth year.
The author Jill Murphy began writing "The Worst Witch" at the age of 15, while still at school, and based many points of the stories on her own school experiences at Ursuline Convent in Wimbledon, England, with Singing becoming Chanting, Chemistry becoming Potions and so on. Recalling how she got the idea for the story, she said: "My two friends and I used to come home in our dark uniforms, looking very scruffy at the end of the day – my dark plaits sprouting tufts, with lost hair ribbons. My Mum used to say 'Look at you all. You look like the three witches!' and it gave me the idea for a witch's school – so that it was exactly like my school, but with a subtle touch of magic. All the characters are based on my school friends (and enemies) and teachers." Murphy concluded the first book at the age of 18, but failed to achieve a publishing deal, causing her to "put it in a drawer" and decide to "concentrate on other things instead." After working as a nanny and in a children’s home, Murphy had a phone call from a small publisher interested in the book. "The Worst Witch" was finally published in 1974, when Murphy was 24.
The Witch's Tales
"The Witch's Tale" was a radio program that began on American radio in May 1931. A weekly anthology show, it was the first radio horror program, and soon became quite popular. In 1936, the magazine "The Witch's Tales" appeared as a companion to it, perhaps inspired by "The Shadow", a successful pulp magazine which had also been launched as the companion of a radio program of the same name. "The Witch's Tales" was published by The Carwood Publishing Co., a small and relatively inexperienced firm. The named editor of the magazine was Alonzo Deen Cole, who wrote the radio episodes, but the editorial work was actually done by Tom Chadburn. Having both a pulp magazine and radio show act as vehicles for Cole's work is an early example of the 21st century's media industry's approach, with content tied together across more than one media platform, but although Street & Smith demonstrated that this could be done successfully for "The Shadow", Carwood did little to promote the radio show in the magazine, probably because of their inexperience. Only one more issue appeared, the following month; it is unlikely that the publisher could have received sales data on the first issue by that time, so there may have been reasons other than poor sales for the magazine's short run, perhaps including weak financing and distribution.