Janet Frame

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Janet Paterson Frame ONZ, CBE, (August 28, 1924 - January 29, 2004) was a New Zealand writer.

Born in Dunedin and raised in Oamaru, she is pre-eminent among New Zealand authors as a writer of great genius. She wrote eleven novels, four collections of short stories, a book of poetry, a children's book, and three volumes of autobiography.

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Life overview

Frame's education included time at Oamaru North School and at Waitaki Girls' High School in Oamaru, then from 1943 at Dunedin Teachers College, with part-time study of English, French, and psychology at the nearby University of Otago.

Later she spent much time in London and in North America.

In 1947, incorrectlt diagnosed as suffering from schizophrenia, she admitted herself to Seacliff Mental Hospital. She spent seven years in various psychiatric hospitals, undergoing over two hundred shock treatments. She published her first book, a collection of short stories entitled The Lagoon and Other Stories, in 1951. She was close to having a leucotomy until the book won the Hubert Church Memorial Award.

From 1954 to 1955 she lived at Frank Sargeson's residence and he encouraged her writing. In 1956, Frame left New Zealand with the help of a State Literary Fund grant. For seven years she lived in Ibiza, Andorra, and England.

She served as the 1965 Burns Fellow at the University of Otago, and lived in the Horowhenua.

Family background proved important to her in her early published work Owls Do Cry, and forms the hinterland to her autobiographical trilogy: To the Is-land, An Angel at my Table, and The Envoy from Mirror City.

Frame won best book of the 1989 Commonwealth Writers Prize for her book The Carpathians.

On February 6, 1990 she became an additional member of the Order of New Zealand. She also gained the award of CBE for services to literature in 1983.

In 1990 Jane Campion made Fram's book An Angel at my Table into a film of the same name.

Over many years her fans considered her a leading candidate to win the Nobel Prize in literature, most recently in 2003 when Asa Bechman, chief literary critic at the Swedish daily Dagens Nyheter, predicted that Frame would win.

She died from leukaemia in early 2004.

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Literary works

Novels (first publication)

  • Owls Do Cry, Pegasus Press, Christchurch, 1957.
  • Faces in the Water, Pegasus Press, Christchurch, 1961.
  • The Edge of the Alphabet, Pegasus Press, Christchurch, 1962.
  • Scented Gardens for the Blind, Pegasus Press, Christchurch, 1963.
  • The Adaptable Man, Pegasus Press, Christchurch, 1963.
  • A State of Siege, Brazillier, New York, 1966.
  • The Rainbirds, WH Allen, London, 1968.(Published in the US as Yellow Flowers in the Antipodean Room in 1969.)
  • Intensive Care, Brazillier, New York, 1970.
  • Daughter Buffalo, Brazillier, New York, 1972.
  • Living in the Maniototo, Brazillier, New York, 1979.
  • The Carpathians, Brazillier, New York 1988.

Stories

  • "University Entrance" in New Zealand Listener, 22 March 1946.
  • "Alison Hendry" in Landfall 2, June 1947. (reprinted in The Lagoon and Other Stories as "Jan Godfrey".)
  • The Lagoon and Other Stories, Caxton Press, Christchurch, 1951 (1952).
  • The Reservoir: Stories and Sketches, Brazillier, New York, 1963.
  • Snowman Snowman: Fables and Fantasies, Brazillier, New York, 1963.
  • The Reservoir and Other Stories, Pegasus Press, Christchurch, 1966.
  • You Are Now Entering the Human Heart, Victoria University Press, Wellington, 1983.

Children's Stories

  • Mona Minim and the Smell of the Sun, Brazillier, New York, 1969.
  • Mona Minim and the Smell of the Sun, (New Edition) Random House/Vintage, Auckland, 2005.

Poetry

  • The Pocket Mirror, Brazillier, New York, 1967.
  • "Three Poems by Janet Frame" in New Zealand Listener, 28 August-3 September 2004 Vol 195 No 3355. view online
  • The Goose Bath: Poems, Random House/Vintage, Auckland, 2006.

Autobiography

  • To the Is-Land (Autobiography 1), Brazillier, New York, 1982.
  • An Angel at My Table (Autobiography 2), Hutchinson, Auckland, 1984.
  • The Envoy From Mirror City (Autobiography 3), Hutchinson, Auckland, 1985.
  • Janet Frame: An Autobiography (Autobiography 1-3), Century Hutchinson, Auckland, 1989.

Articles

  • "A Letter to Frank Sargeson" in Landfall 25, March 1953, p.5.
  • "Review of Terence Journet's Take My Tip" in Landfall 32, December 1954, pp. 309-310.
  • "Review of A Fable by William Faulkner" in Parson's Packet, no. 36, October-December 1955, pp. 12-13.
  • "Memory and a Pocketful of Words" in Times Literary Supplement, 4 June 1964, pp. 12-13.
  • "This Desirable Property" in New Zealand Listener, 3 July 1964, pp. 12-13.
  • "Beginnings" in Landfall 73, March 1965, pp. 40-47.
  • "The Burns Fellowship" in Landfall 87, September 1968, pp. 241-242.
  • "Charles Brasch 1909-1973: Tributes and Memories from His Friends" in Islands 5, Spring 1973, pp. 251-253.
  • "Janet Frame on Tales from Grimm" in Education, Early Reading Series, 24, 9, 1975, p. 27.
  • "Departures and Returns" in G. Amirthanayagan (ed.) Writers in East-West Encounter, Macmillan, London, 1982.
  • "A last Letter to Frank Sargeson" in Islands 33, July 1984, pp. 17-22.

A new volume of poetry, The Goose Bath: Poems, appeared posthumously in March 2006, published by Random House (NZ) with the guidance of Frame's niece Pamela Gordon, Denis Harold, Wellington writer Bill Manhire and the Janet Frame Literary Trust in accordance with Janet Frame's wishes.

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Trivia

  • The original 1951 edition of The Lagoon and Other Stories, and a number of subsequent editions printed using movable type, of her story "Dossy" contain a completely mistaken, out of place line in the third-to-last paragraph.
  • Frame originally entitled Owls Do Cry as Talk of Treasure - taken from the frontispiece quotation for the book (a quote from The Tempest). Albion Wright at Pegasus Press, who didn't like the original title, made the change.
  • Frame wore a blue and gold (Otago "icon") scarf to the 2001 exhibition of her work in the Hocken Collections, and explained that she had bought it the night before at a supermarket because she felt she should have something new to wear at the Opening.
  • Dr. Emily Hancock Siedeberg, New Zealand's first female medical graduate, delivered Janet Frame at St Helens Hospital, Dunedin.
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See also

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References

  • University of Otago Magazine, February 2005.
  • King, Michael Wrestling with the Angel: A Life of Janet Frame, Penguin Books (NZ), 2000.
  • King, Michael An Inward Sun: The World of Janet Frame, Penguin Books (NZ), 2002.
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External links


{{Persondata |NAME=Frame, Janet Paterson |ALTERNATIVE NAMES= |SHORT DESCRIPTION=Author |DATE OF BIRTH=August 28, 1924 |PLACE OF BIRTH=Dunedin, New Zealand |DATE OF DEATH=January 29, 2004 |PLACE OF DEATH= }}

da:Janet Frame de:Janet Frame he:ג'נט פריים nl:Janet Frame pl:Janet Frame sv:Janet Frame

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