Janet Frame Totally Explained

Everything about Janet Frame totally explained

Janet Paterson Frame, ONZ, CBE (August 28 1924 - January 29 2004), was a New Zealand author who published eleven novels in her lifetime, together with three collections of short stories, a book of poetry, an edition of juvenile fiction, and three volumes of autobiography. Since her death, a twelfth novel and a second volume of poetry have been posthumously published.
Frame is well-known for her literary output as well as her personal history, having narrowly escaped lobotomy when her first book was awarded a national literary prize. Partly as a result of her dramatic past, Frame, aptly described by scholar Simone Oettli as an artist who paradoxically wanted simultaneous fame and anonymity, has been the focus of a wide range of biographical myths posited by literary critics and the general public alike. Although Frame's writing — which eschewed the dominant New Zealand literary realism of the time, combining prose, poetry, modernist and postmodernist elements with a somewhat magical realist style — was met with a decidedly mixed critical and public reception, her status as a respected novelist of international repute, coupled with her remarkable life-story, immortalised in her autobiographies and director Jane Campion's film-adaptation of the texts, have earned her a place in twentieth-century literary history.

Biographical overview

Born in Dunedin, on the east coast of New Zealand's South Island, Frame was the third of five children born to George, a railway worker, and to Lottie (née Godfrey), a former housemaid to the family of writer Katherine Mansfield.). As described in detail in her autobiographies, Frame's childhood was marked by the deaths of two of her sisters, Myrtle and Isabel, who drowned in separate incidents at a young age, and the epileptic seizures suffered by her brother George (referred to as "Geordie" and "Bruddie").
   In 1943 Frame began training as a teacher at the Dunedin College of Education, while at the same time auditing courses in English, French and psychology at the adjacent University of Otago.
   While practising teaching in Dunedin in 1947, Frame dramatically abandoned her classroom during a scheduled visit from a school-inspector. Shortly thereafter she was admitted to the psychiatric ward of the local Dunedin hospital. including the painter Theophilus Brown and his partner Paul Wonner, along with the novelists May Sarton, Philip Roth, John Marquand, Jr. and Alan Lelchuck. In addition, Frame's one-time teacher/therapist and longtime friend Money lived and worked in North America from 1947 onwards, and Frame frequently used his home in Baltimore as a base. Some contested Abrahamson's interpretation, most vehemently Frame's niece and current literary executor Pamela Gordon, who herself has a daughter with autism, and the author defended the work. Although it would seem that Frame had little in common with the lower-functioning, non-communicative, often intellectually handicapped autistic group to which Gordon has referred, Rumours occasionally circulated portraying Frame as a contender for the Nobel Prize in literature, most notably in 1998, when Frame was dubbed the leading contender after a journalist spotted her name at the top of a list that was later revealed to have been in alphabetical order, and again five years later, in 2003, when Asa Bechman, the influential chief literary critic at the Swedish daily Dagens Nyheter, wrongly predicted that the author would win the prestigious prize. In 2000, the popular historian Michael King published his authorised biography of Frame, Wrestling with the Angel, simultaneously released in New Zealand and North America, with British and Australian editions appearing in the following years. with one critic likening King's role to that of a ventriloquist's dummy, while others felt that he'd failed to come to terms with the complexity and subtlety of his subject. King defended his project and maintained that future biographies on Frame would eventually fill in the gaps left by his own work.
   Janet Frame died in Dunedin in January 2004, aged 79, from acute myeloid leukaemia, shortly after becoming one of the inaugural recipients of New Zealand's newly-minted "Icon" and Prime Minister's awards for the arts. Since her death, two posthumous works have been published in Oceania: a volume of poetry entitled The Goose Bath, which was awarded the local 2007 Montana Book Award for poetry, generating some controversy among New Zealand's literati, and a previously unpublished novel, Towards Another Summer, largely based on a weekend Frame spent with British journalist Geoffrey Moorhouse and his family.

Literary works

Novels

1957. Owls Do Cry. Christchurch: Pegasus Press.
1961. Faces in the Water. Christchurch: Pegasus Press; New York: Braziller.
1962. The Edge of the Alphabet. Christchurch: Pegasus Press.
1963. Scented Gardens for the Blind. London: WH Allen.
1965. The Adaptable Man. London: WH Allen.
1966. A State of Siege. New York: Braziller.
1968. The Rainbirds. London: WH Allen. (Published in the US with Frame's preferred original title, Yellow Flowers in the Antipodean Room. New York: Braziller, 1969)
1970. Intensive Care. New York: Braziller.
1972. Daughter Buffalo. New York: Braziller.
1979. Living in the Maniototo. New York: Braziller.
1989. The Carpathians. New York: Braziller.
2007 Towards Another Summer. Auckland: Vintage (Posthumously published). ISBN 9781869418687

Short stories

1951 The Lagoon and Other Stories. Christchurch: Caxton Press. (Mistakenly dated on first edition as 1952)

1963. The Reservoir: Stories and Sketches/Snowman Snowman: Fables and Fantasies. New York: Braziller (Edited selection published in the Commonwealth edition The Reservoir and Other Stories London: W.H. Allen, 1966).

1983. You Are Now Entering the Human Heart. Wellington: Victoria University Press.

Children's fiction

1969. Mona Minim and the Smell of the Sun. (With illustrations by Robin Jacques.) New York: Braziller (Reissued posthumously in 2005 by Random House, New Zealand, with illustrations by David Elliot).

Poetry

1967. The Pocket Mirror. New York: Braziller.

2006. The Goose Bath. Auckland: Random House/Vintage (Posthumously published); (Released in the UK as a collected edition along with selections from The Pocket Mirror under the title Storms Will Tell: Selected Poems. Bloodaxe Books, 2008)

Autobiography

1982. To the Is-Land (Autobiography 1). New York: Braziller.

1984. An Angel at My Table (Autobiography 2). New York: Braziller.

1984. The Envoy From Mirror City (Autobiography 3). Auckland: Century Hutchinson.

1989. An Autobiography (Collected edition). Auckland: Century Hutchinson (Posthumously reprinted under the title An Angel at My Table, London: Virago, 2008).

Separately published stories and poems

1946. "University Entrance" in New Zealand Listener, 22 March 1946.

1947. "Alison Hendry" in Landfall 2, June 1947. (Published under the penname Jan Godfrey; reprinted in The Lagoon and Other Stories under the title "Jan Godfrey".)

1954. "The Waitress" in New Zealand Listener, 9 July 1954

1954. "The Liftman" in New Zealand Listener, 13 August 1954

1954. "On Paying the Third Installment" in New Zealand Listener, 10 September 1954

1954. "Lolly Legs" in New Zealand Listener, 15 October 1954

1954. "Trio Concert" in New Zealand Listener, 29 October 1954.

1954. "Timothy" in New Zealand Listener, 26 November 1954

1955. "The Transformation" in New Zealand Listener, 28 January 1955

1956. "The Ferry" in New Zealand Listener, 13 July 1956.

1956. "Waiting for Daylight" in Landfall (NZ) 10

1956. "I Got Shoes" in New Zealand Listener, 2 November 1956.

1957. "Face Downwards in the Grass" in Mate (NZ) 1

1957. "The Dead" in Landfall (NZ) 11

1957. "The Wind Brother" in School Journal (NZ) 51.1

1958. "The Friday Night World" in School Journal (NZ) 52.1

1962. "Prizes" in The New Yorker 10 March 1962

1962. "The Red-Currant Bush, the Black-Currant Bush, the Gooseberry Bush, the African Thorn Hedge, and the Garden Gate Who Was Once the Head of an Iron Bed" in Mademoiselle April 1962

1963. "The Reservoir" in The New Yorker 12 January 1963 (reprinted in The Reservoir: Stories and Sketches)

1963. "The Chosen Image" in Vogue, July 1963

1964. "The Joiner" in Landfall (NZ) 18

1957. "The Road to Takapuna" in Mate (NZ) 12

1964. "Scott's Horse" in Landfall (NZ) 18

1964. "The Senator Had Plans" in Landfall (NZ) 18

1965. "The Bath" in Landfall (NZ) 19 (Reprinted in You Are Now Entering the Human Heart)

1966. "A Boy's Will" in Landfall (NZ) 20

1966. "White Turnips: A Timely Monologue" in New Zealand Monthly Review May 1966

1966. "In Alco Hall" in Harper's Bazaar, November 1966

1968. "In Mexico City" in New Zealand Listener, 20 December 1968

1969. "You Are Now Entering the Human Heart" in The New Yorker 29 March 1969 (Reprinted in You Are Now Entering the Human Heart)

1969. "The Birds of the Air" in Harper's Bazaar, June 1969

1969. "Jet Flight" in New Zealand Listener, 8 August 1969

1969. "The Words" in Mademoiselle October 1969

1970. "Winter Garden" in The New Yorker 31 January 1970

1974. "They Never Looked Back" in New Zealand Listener, 23 March 1974

1975. "The Painter" in New Zealand Listener, 6 September 1975

1976. "Rain on the Roof" in The Journal (NZ), April 1976 (Previously published in The Pocket Mirror)

1979. "Insulation" in New Zealand Listener, 17 March 1979

1979. "Two Widowers" in New Zealand Listener, 9 June 1979

2004. "Three Poems by Janet Frame" in New Zealand Listener, 28 August-3 September 2004 view online

Articles, reviews, essays and letters

1953. "A Letter to Frank Sargeson" in Landfall 25, March 1953

1954. "Review of Terence Journet's Take My Tip" in Landfall 32, December 1954

1955. "Review of A Fable by William Faulkner" in Parson's Packet, no. 36, October-December 1955

1964. "Memory and a Pocketful of Words" in Times Literary Supplement, 4 June 1964

1964. "This Desirable Property" in New Zealand Listener, 3 July 1964

1965. "Beginnings" in Landfall (NZ) 73, March 1965

1968. "The Burns Fellowship" in Landfall (NZ) 87, September 1968

1973. "Charles Brasch 1909-1973: Tributes and Memories from His Friends" in Islands (NZ) 5, Spring 1973

1975. "Janet Frame on Tales from Grimm" in Education (NZ) 24.9, 1975

1982. "Departures and Returns" in G. Amirthanayagan (ed.) Writers in East-West Encounter, London: Macmillan, 1982 (Originally delivered as a paper at the International Colloquium on the Cross-Cultural Encounter in Literature, East-West Center, Honolulu, October 1977).

1984. "A last Letter to Frank Sargeson" in Islands (NZ) 33, July 1984

Awards & Honours

1951: Hubert Church Prose Award (The Lagoon and other Stories)

1956: New Zealand Literary Fund Grant

1958: New Zealand Literary Fund Award for Achievement (Owls Do Cry)

1964: Hubert Church Prose Award (Scented Gardens for the Blind); New Zealand Literary Fund Scholarship in Letters.

1965: Robert Burns Fellowship, University of Otago, Dunedin, NZ

1967: "Buckland Literary Award." (The Reservoir and Other Stories/A State of Siege)

1969: New Zealand Literary Fund Award (The Pocket Mirror: Poems)

1971: Buckland Literary Award (Intensive Care); Hubert Church Prose Award." (Intensive Care)

1972: President of Honour: P.E.N. International New Zealand Centre, Wellington, NZ

1973: James Wattie Book of the Year Award (Daughter Buffallo)

1974: Hubert Church Prose Award (Daughter Buffallo); Winn-Manson Menton Fellowship.

1978: Honorary Doctor of Literature (D.Litt. Honoris Causa) University of Otago, Dunedin, NZ

1979: Buckland Literary Award (Living in the Maniototo)

1980: New Zealand Book Award for Fiction (Living in the Maniototo)

1983: Buckland Literary Award; Sir James Wattie Book of the Year Award (To the Is-Land); C.B.E. (Commander, Order of the British Empire)

1984: Frank Sargeson Fellowship, University of Auckland, NZ

1984: New Zealand Book Award for Non-Fiction (An Angel at My Table); Sir James Wattie Book of the Year Award (An Angel at My Table); Turnovsky Prize for Outstanding Achievement in the Arts

1985: Sir James Wattie Book of the Year Award (The Envoy from Mirror City)

1986: New Zealand Book Award for Non-Fiction (The Envoy from Mirror City); Honorary Foreign Member: The American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters

1989: Ansett New Zealand Book Award for Fiction; Commonwealth Writers Prize for Best Book (The Carpathians)

1990: O.N.Z. (Member, Order of New Zealand)

1992: Honorary Doctor of Literature (D.Litt), University of Waikato, Hamilton, NZ

1994: Massey University Medal, Massey University, Palmerston North, NZ

2003: Arts Foundation of New Zealand Icon Artists; New Zealand Prime Minister’s Award for Literary Achievement

2007: Montana Book Award for Poetry (The Goose Bath)Further Information

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