Diana Wynne Jones, who died on March 26 aged 76, was a writer whose children’s fantasies won her a small but devoted following; in recent years, following the success of JK Rowling’s Harry Potter books, she enjoyed wider commercial success and, from academics who had grown up with her earlier work, serious critical attention.
Diana Wynne Jones Photo: REX FEATURES
Diana Wynne Jones was born on August 16 1934 in north London, the eldest of three daughters of progressive schoolteachers who were neglectful and emotionally distant. On the outbreak of war the family was evacuated to the Lake District where they shared, with several other families, the large house which had once been home to the Altounyan children, upon whom Arthur Ransome based his Swallows and amazons stories. Ransome himself (“a small, tubby man with a lot of beard”) came round to complain about the noise the children were making; Beatrix Potter was more direct, smacking Diana’s younger sister for swinging on a gate.
Despite this unpromising introduction to literary figures — “up until then I’d thought that books were produced by machines at Woolworth’s” — Diana had, by the age of eight, determined to become a writer.
Though her father had bought the complete works of Ransome, he doled them out to his daughters at the rate of one (to be shared amongst them) a year. Starved of reading material, Diana began making up stories for her younger sisters: Isobel, now a poet and Emeritus Professor of English at Birkbeck College in the University of London, and Ursula, a successful children’s author and actress who once played Elsie Duckworth in Coronation Street.
In 1943 the family settled at Thaxted, Essex, where Diana’s parents ran an educational conference centre and the girls slept in an unheated lean-to. Diana was educated at the Friends’ School, Saffron Walden, and St Anne’s College, Oxford, where she attended classes with both CS Lewis (“a superb lecturer”) and JRR Tolkien (“almost inaudible”). They confirmed her in a love of myth and romance.
In 1956 Diana Wynne Jones married the Chaucerian scholar John Burrow and began to explore children’s literature while reading to their three sons. She made her first serious attempts to write only when the boys had started school; at first she concentrated on plays, which met with little success. But in 1970 she published her first novel, Changeover, a satire about the dying days of colonial rule.
After forming a firm friendship with the literary agent Laura Cecil, she settled on writing children’s books. She had already concluded that she would have to write fantasy, since she had so little experience of normal life and, after reading Lord of the Rings, realised that it was possible to do so in the long form. But if Tolkien had given an example, it was not one Diana Wynne Jones followed slavishly; in her funny and acute spoof travel book, A Tough Guide to Fantasyland (1996), she identified and mocked some of the most common tropes of the sword and sorcery school.
Wilkins’ Tooth (1973), by contrast, pitted a group of contemporary schoolchildren against a witch. It was followed the next year by The Ogre Downstairs, in which the apparent villain is a stern stepfather and the magical component a chemistry set. In 1975, the myth-inspired Eight Days of Luke was followed by Dogsbody, a funny science fiction tale about Sirius the Dogstar being sentenced to live on Earth as a labrador. It was shortlisted for the Carnegie Medal.
Diana Wynne Jones maintained her industrious output for the next two decades. In 1977 the first of the “Chrestomanci” books, which featured multiple magical worlds policed by enchanters with nine lives, appeared. Charmed Life, which won The Guardian children’s fiction prize, was succeeded, amongst others in the series, by The Magicians of Caprona (1980) and Witch Week (1982).
Her 40 or so books maintained a remarkably high standard in both inventiveness and the elegance of their prose. Among the most notable were Archer’s Goon (1984), adapted as a BBC television series in 1992; The Time of the Ghost (1981); Fire and Hemlock (1985); The Dalemark Quartet (1979-93); and Howl’s Moving Castle (1986) and its sequels, Castle in the Air (1990) and House of Many Ways (2008). The first of that series was filmed by the Japanese animator Hayao Miyazaki in 2004.
Diana Wynne Jones was cheerful, energetic and accident-prone, and often admitted to laughing out loud as she wrote. After the success of Harry Potter, much of her backlist was reissued by HarperCollins in paperbacks; there was also a conference devoted to her work in 2009. She received numerous awards, including a World Fantasy lifetime achievement award and, in 2006, an honorary DLitt from Bristol University.
Diana Wynne Jones is survived by her husband and three sons.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/8414429/Diana-Wynne-Jones.html
Wilkins’ Tooth (1973), by contrast, pitted a group of contemporary schoolchildren against a witch. It was followed the next year by The Ogre Downstairs, in which the apparent villain is a stern stepfather and the magical component a chemistry set. In 1975, the myth-inspired Eight Days of Luke was followed by Dogsbody, a funny science fiction tale about Sirius the Dogstar being sentenced to live on Earth as a labrador. It was shortlisted for the Carnegie Medal.
Diana Wynne Jones maintained her industrious output for the next two decades. In 1977 the first of the “Chrestomanci” books, which featured multiple magical worlds policed by enchanters with nine lives, appeared. Charmed Life, which won The Guardian children’s fiction prize, was succeeded, amongst others in the series, by The Magicians of Caprona (1980) and Witch Week (1982).
Her 40 or so books maintained a remarkably high standard in both inventiveness and the elegance of their prose. Among the most notable were Archer’s Goon (1984), adapted as a BBC television series in 1992; The Time of the Ghost (1981); Fire and Hemlock (1985); The Dalemark Quartet (1979-93); and Howl’s Moving Castle (1986) and its sequels, Castle in the Air (1990) and House of Many Ways (2008). The first of that series was filmed by the Japanese animator Hayao Miyazaki in 2004.
Diana Wynne Jones was cheerful, energetic and accident-prone, and often admitted to laughing out loud as she wrote. After the success of Harry Potter, much of her backlist was reissued by HarperCollins in paperbacks; there was also a conference devoted to her work in 2009. She received numerous awards, including a World Fantasy lifetime achievement award and, in 2006, an honorary DLitt from Bristol University.
Diana Wynne Jones is survived by her husband and three sons.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/8414429/Diana-Wynne-Jones.html
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