Janet Frame

Janet Paterson Frame ONZ, CBE, (August 28, 1924 - January 29, 2004) was the New Zealand author of eleven novels, four collections of short stories, a book of poetry, a children's book, and a three volume autobiography.

Life overview

Born in Dunedin, New Zealand, she was one of five children of a railway worker. Frame was reared in Oamaru (which she later fictionalised as "Waimaru"), attending Oamaru North School and Waitaki Girls' High School. Two of her three sisters drowned in separate incidents at a young age and her only brother was an epileptic. Only he and his sister, June, of the five children, went on to marry others and have families.

In 1943, Frame enrolled at Dunedin Teachers' College, studying English, French and psychology at the adjacent University of Otago.

In 1947, while doing student teaching in Dunedin, Frame experienced a moment of panic that led her to leave the classroom. College authorities soon contacted her parents and pressured them to sign papers committing Frame to Seacliff Mental Hospital where she was incorrectly diagnosed as suffering from schizophrenia. Thus began eight years on and off in various psychiatric hospitals, undergoing over 200 shock treatments. In 1951, while a patient, she published her first book, a collection of short stories entitled The Lagoon and Other Stories, which won the Hubert Church Memorial Award. That award led her doctors to cancel the leucotomy they were about to perform on her.

From 1954 to 1955, the pioneering New Zealand author Frank Sargeson let Frame live at no charge in an outbuilding at his residence in the Auckland suburb of Takapuna. Sargeson encouraged her in good writing habits, but she never let him see her work. She wrote her first novel "Owls Do Cry" while staying at his place. In 1956, Frame left New Zealand with the help of a State Literary Fund grant. For seven years she lived in London, with sojourns in Ibiza and Andorra. Not long after arriving in London, the American trained psychiatrist Alan Miller, who had trained at the Johns Hopkins University under the New Zealander John Money, pronounced her sane. Money and Frame had become good friends when they met at Otago University and their friendship endured for the rest of their lives.

She returned to New Zealand in 1964, upon learning of her father's death. (Her autobiography ends at this point.) She served as the 1965 Burns Fellow at the University of Otago, and then lived in several different parts of New Zealand including Dunedin, Auckland, Taranaki, Wanganui and the Horowhenua. Between 1965 and 1974, she spent much time in the USA, including at the Yaddo literary colony.

Her autobiographical trilogy To the Is-land, An Angel at my Table, and The Envoy from Mirror City was adapted by Jane Campion into the 1990 film An Angel at my Table, in which Kerry Fox and two other actresses of different ages played the role of Frame. This autobiography contains an important account of an extended stay in a mental hospital, just before such hospitals were largely closed down in the 1960s.

Janet Frame was a private person, spending the later part of her life out of the public limelight under her officially registered name of "Janet Clutha".

In 1983, Frame became a Commander of the Order of British Empire (CBE) for services to literature. She won the 1989 Commonwealth Writers Prize for her book The Carpathians. In 1990, she was admitted to the Order of New Zealand.

Frame was believed to be in the running for the Nobel Prize in literature, especially when Asa Bechman, chief literary critic at the Swedish daily Dagens Nyheter, predicted in 2003 that she would win it.

Janet Frame died at Dunedin hospital, aged 79, from acute myeloid leukaemia, shortly after winning the New Zealand Prime Minister's Award for Literary Achievement.

Literary works

• See: Auckand University List of Frame's Publications

Novels

Dates given record the date of first publication:

• 1957. Owls Do Cry. Christchurch NZ: Pegasus Press.
• 1961. Faces in the Water. Pegasus Press.
• 1962. The Edge of the Alphabet. Pegasus Press, Christchurch, 1962.
• 1963. Scented Gardens for the Blind. Pegasus Press, Christchurch, 1963.
• 1963. The Adaptable Man. Pegasus Press, Christchurch, 1963.
• 1966. A State of Siege. New York: Brazillier.
• 1963. The Rainbirds. WH Allen, London, 1968. Published in the USA in 1969 as Yellow Flowers in the Antipodean Room.
• 1970. Intensive Care. Brazillier.
• 1972. Daughter Buffalo. Brazillier.
• 1979. Living in the Maniototo. Brazillier.
• 1989. The Carpathians. Brazillier.

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".)
• 1951 (1952). The Lagoon and Other Stories. Christchurch: Caxton Press.
• 1963. The Reservoir: Stories and Sketches. New York: Brazillier.
• 1963. Snowman Snowman: Fables and Fantasies. New York: Brazillier.
• 1966. The Reservoir and Other Stories. Christchurch: Pegasus Press.
• 1983. You Are Now Entering the Human Heart. Wellington: Victoria University Press.

Children's Stories

• 1969. Mona Minim and the Smell of the Sun. New York: Brazillier.
• 2005. Mona Minim and the Smell of the Sun, new edition. Auckland: Random House/Vintage.

Poetry

• 1967. The Pocket Mirror. New York: Brazillier.
• "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. (This new volume of poetry appeared posthumously in March 2006, published 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.)

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.

Trivia

• The original 1951 edition of The Lagoon and Other Stories, and a number of subsequent editions printed using movable type, contain a completely mistaken, out of place line in the third-to-last paragraph of Frame's story "Dossy".
• Frame originally entitled her first novel Talk of Treasure but Albion Wright at Pegasus Press didn't like that title, and suggested the change to Owls Do Cry from the frontispiece quotation for the book (a quote from The Tempest).
• Frame wore a striking blue-and-gold (Otago colours) scarf to the 2001 exhibition of her work in the Hocken Collections. When the bold scarf was admired, she joked 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.

See also

• New Zealand literature
• Michael King - Biographer
• Frank Sargeson - Mentor

References

ISBN links support NWE through referral fees

• 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.
• 'Legendary NZ writer Janet Frame dies'. New Zealand Herald. 29 January 2004. [1]
• Delbaere, Jeanne,ed. The Ring of Fire. Essays on Janet Frame, Dangaroo Press (Aarhus),1992.

External links

• Web Site of Janet Frame Literary Trust (Janet Frame's Estate)
• Daily Telegraph obituary
• NZ Book Council Profile
• Aotearoa New Zealand Sound Archive (scroll down to hear a reading of unpublished poem "Friends Far Away Die"
• "Wrestling With The Angel", a documentary
• Mona Minim illustrations by David Elliot
• Auckland University List of Janet Frame's Publications

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