Jane Gardam Biography
Jane Gardam was born Jean Mary Pearson in Coatham, North Yorkshire on 11 July
1928. She was educated at Saltburn High School for Girls, and won a scholarship
to the University of London where she read English at Bedford College. In 1951
she worked as a Red Cross Travelling Librarian to Hospital Libraries, afterwards
taking up editorial posts at Weldon Ladies Journal (sub-editor, 1952) and
the literary weekly Time and Tide (Assistant Editor, 1952-4).
Her first book for adults, Black Faces, White Faces (1975), a collection
of linked short stories about Jamaica, won both the David Higham Prize for
Fiction and the Winifred Holtby Memorial Prize. Subsequent collections of short
stories include The Pangs of Love and Other Stories (1983), winner of the
Katherine Mansfield Award; Going into a Dark House (1994), which was
awarded the PEN/Macmillan Silver Pen Award (1995); and Missing the Midnight:
Hauntings & Grotesques (1997).
Her first novel for adults, God on the Rocks (1978), a
coming-of-age novel set in the 1930s, was adapted for television in 1992. It won
the Prix Baudelaire (France) in 1989 and was shortlisted for the Booker Prize
for Fiction. Her other novels include The Queen of the Tambourine (1991),
a haunting tale about a woman's fascination with a mysterious stranger, which
won the Whitbread Novel Award; Faith Fox (1996), a portrait of England in
the 1990s; and The Flight of the Maidens (2000), set just after the
Second World War, which narrates the story of three Yorkshire schoolgirls on the
brink of university and adult life. This book was adapted for BBC Radio 4's
Woman's Hour. In 1999 Jane Gardam was awarded the Heywood Hill Literary Prize in
recognition of a distinguished literary career.
Her non-fiction includes a book about the Yorkshire of her childhood in The
Iron Coast (1994), published with photographs by Peter Burton and Harland
Walshaw.
She also writes for children and young adults. Her novel Bilgewater
(1977), originally written for children, has now been re-classified as adult
fiction. She was awarded the Whitbread Children's Book Award for The Hollow
Land (1981) and is the author of A Few Fair Days (1971), a collection
of short stories for children set on a Cumberland farm, and two novels for
teenagers, A Long Way From Verona (1971), which explores a wartime
childhood in Yorkshire, and The Summer After the Funeral (1973), a story
about a loss of innocence after the death of a father.
She is a member of PEN and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.
She is married with three children and divides her time between East Kent and
Yorkshire. Her latest books are The People on Privilege Hill (2007), a
collection of short stories; and The Man in the Wooden Hat (2009), a
companion novel to Old Filth (2004) for which she was nominated for the
Orange Prize for Fiction.
From contemporarywriters.com, 2009
Partial Bibliography
Novels
A Few Fair Days (1971)
A Long Way from Verona (1971)
The Summer After the Funeral (1973)
Black Faces, White Faces (1975)
Bilgewater (1976)
God on the Rocks (1978)
The Sidmouth Letters (1980)
Bridget and William (1981)
Horse (1982)
Kit (1983)
Crusoe's Daughter (1985)
Kit in Boots (1986)
Swan (1987)
Through the Doll's House Door (1987)
The Queen of the Tambourine (1991)
Black Woolly Pony (1993)
Faith Fox (1996)
Missing the Midnight (1997)
The Green Man (1998)
The Flight of the Maidens (2000)
Old Filth (2004)
Showing the Flag (2009)
The Man in the Wooden Hat (2009)
Collections
The Hollow Land (1981)
The Pangs of Love and Other Stories (1983)
Kit / Kit in Boots (1988)
Showing the Flag and Other Stories (1989)
Trio: Three Stories from Cheltenham (1993)
Going into a Dark House (1994)
Animal Stories (1995)
Magical Stories (1995)
Stories for Five-Year-Olds (1995)
Stories for Six-Year-Olds (1995)
Tufty Bear (1996)
The Kit Stories (1998)
The People on Privilege Hill (2007)
Non fiction
The Iron Coast (1994)
This biography was last updated on 09/12/2009.
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