Joan Aiken (1924–2004)
Författare till Mysteriet på Willoughby Chase
Om författaren
Joan Delano Aiken was born in Rye, Sussex, England, on September 4, 1924, the daughter of the Pulitzer Prize winner, writer Conrad Aiken. She was raised in a rural area and home schooled by her mother until the age 12. She then attended Wychwood School, a boarding school in Oxford. Her work first visa mer appeared in 1941 when the British Broadcasting Corporation, where she worked as a librarian, broadcast some of her short stories on their Children's Hour program. Aiken also worked at St. Thomas's Hospital, and in 1943 she moved to the reference department of the London office of the United Nations, where she collected information about resistance movements. She worked for the UN until 1949, all the while continuing to write stories. In 1953 a collection of short fiction called All You've Ever Wanted and Other Stories was published. While writing The Wolves of Willoughby Chase, begun in 1952, her husband became ill and died of lung cancer in 1955. After working for five years as a copy editor at Argosy Magazine, and at the J. Walter Thompson Advertising Firm, she returned and finished the book in 1963. The Wolves of Willoughby Chase won the Lewis Carroll Shelf Award and was made into a successful film in 1988. In 1969 The Whispering Mountain won the Guardian Children's Book Award, and in 1972, Night Fall won America's Edgar Allen Poe Award for juvenile mystery. Aiken is best known for her adult "fantasy" stories. She has received awards for children's fiction and for mystery fiction, and has also written ''sequels'' to Jane Austen books. She collaborated with her daughter to write many episodes of her Arabel and Mortimer the raven series for the BBC. In all, Aiken wrote 92 novels - including 27 for adults - as well as plays, poems and short stories, although she was best known as a writer of children's stories. Joan Aiken died in January of 2004 at the age of 79. (Bowker Author Biography) visa färre
Foto taget av: Rod Delroy
Serier
Verk av Joan Aiken
Jane Fairfax: The Secret Story of the Second Heroine in Jane Austen's Emma (1990) — Författare — 370 exemplar
The Watsons and Emma Watson: Jane Austen's Unfinished Novel Completed by Joan Aiken (1996) 115 exemplar
The Rented Swan 4 exemplar
Mitox (I) 3 exemplar
Clem's Dream [short fiction] 3 exemplar
A Necklace of Raindrops [short story] 2 exemplar
Hair (short story) 2 exemplar
Lungewater [short story] 1 exemplar
1992 1 exemplar
1991 1 exemplar
Das Todesparfüm 1 exemplar
Autograph, (Children's S. F. Writer), S. 3x5 1 exemplar
Lodgers [short fiction] 1 exemplar
L' Eredita' Contesa 1 exemplar
Ghostly Beasts 1 exemplar
O Sonâmbulo do inverno 1 exemplar
הזאבים מאחוזת וילובי 1 exemplar
A Mermaid Too Many [short story] 1 exemplar
Goblin Music 1 exemplar
Model Wife (short story) 1 exemplar
Water of Youth (short story) 1 exemplar
Find Me 1 exemplar
The Companion 1 exemplar
Finders Keepers 1 exemplar
Marmalade Wine [short story] 1 exemplar
The Elves in the Shelves [short story] 1 exemplar
The Fluttering Thing (short story) 1 exemplar
Second Thoughts (short story) 1 exemplar
Wee Robin (short story) 1 exemplar
The Monkey's Wedding (short story) 1 exemplar
The Helper (short story) 1 exemplar
The Sale of Midsummer (short story) 1 exemplar
Honeymaroon (short story) 1 exemplar
Harp Music (short story) 1 exemplar
The Magnesia Tree (short story) 1 exemplar
Octopi in the Sky (short story) 1 exemplar
The Paper Queen (short story) 1 exemplar
Spur of the Moment (short story) 1 exemplar
Red-Hot Favourite (short story) 1 exemplar
Girl in a Whirl (short story) 1 exemplar
O sonâmbulo do inverno 1 exemplar
Associerade verk
The 20th-Century Children's Book Treasury: Picture Books and Stories to Read Aloud (1998) — Författare — 1,528 exemplar
Sixteen: Short Stories by Outstanding Writers for Young Adults (1985) — Bidragsgivare — 160 exemplar
The Virago Book of Ghost Stories Volume 2: The Twentieth Century (1991) — Bidragsgivare — 97 exemplar
Ladies of Fantasy: Two Centuries of Sinister Stories by the Gentle Sex (1975) — Bidragsgivare — 43 exemplar
Bruce Coville's Book of Nightmares II: More Tales to Make You Scream (1997) — Bidragsgivare — 43 exemplar
A Century of Children's Ghost Stories: Tales of Dread and Delight (1995) — Bidragsgivare — 27 exemplar
The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction July/August 2011, Vol. 121, Nos. 1 & 2 (2011) — Bidragsgivare — 13 exemplar
Geschichten Geschichten Geschichten . Zum Vorlesen und zum Selberlesen. Bilder von Ingrid Schneider (1988) — Bidragsgivare — 7 exemplar
Cricket Magazine, Vol. 4, No. 6, February 1977 — Bidragsgivare — 2 exemplar
The Yearling Gift Library For Girls Set 1: Charlotte's Web, Roller Skates, The Wolves of Willoughby Chase, Harriet the… — Bidragsgivare — 1 exemplar
Cricket Magazine, Vol. 4, No. 10, June 1977 — Bidragsgivare — 1 exemplar
Cricket Magazine, Vol. 4, No. 11, July 1977 — Bidragsgivare — 1 exemplar
Taggad
Allmänna fakta
- Namn enligt folkbokföringen
- Goldstein, Joan Delano Aiken Brown
- Födelsedag
- 1924-09-04
- Avled
- 2004-01-04
- Kön
- female
- Nationalitet
- UK
- Födelseort
- Rye, East Sussex, England, UK
- Dödsort
- Petworth, West Sussex, England, UK
- Bostadsorter
- London, England, UK
New York, USA - Utbildning
- Wychwood School for Girls, Oxford
- Yrken
- Children's Author
Novelist
Advertising Copywriter
Editor - Relationer
- Aiken, Conrad (father)
Armstrong, Martin (stepfather)
Hodge, Jane Aiken (sister)
Aiken, John (brother)
Brown, Ronald George (husband)
Goldstein, Julius (husband) (visa alla 7)
Aiken, Lizza (daughter) - Organisationer
- BBC
Argosy - Priser och utmärkelser
- Guardian Award (1969)
Edgar Allan Poe Award (1972)
Member of the Order of the British Empire (1999) - Agent
- A. M. Heath & Co.
- Kort biografi
- Joan Aiken was an English writer who received the MBE for services to Children's Literature. She was known as a writer of wild fantasy, Gothic novels and short stories.
She was born in Rye, East Sussex, into a family of writers, including her father, Conrad Aiken (who won a Pulitzer Prize for his poetry), and her sister, Jane Aiken Hodge. She worked for the United Nations Information Office during the second world war, and then as an editor and freelance on Argosy magazine before she started writing full time, mainly children's books and thrillers. For her books she received the Guardian Award (1969) and the Edgar Allan Poe Award (1972).
Her most popular series, the "Wolves Chronicles" which began with The Wolves of Willoughby Chase, was set in an elaborate alternate period of history in a Britain in which James II was never deposed in the Glorious Revolution,and so supporters of the House of Hanover continually plot to overthrow the Stuart Kings. These books also feature cockney urchin heroine Dido Twite and her adventures and travels all over the world.
Another series of children's books about Arabel and her raven Mortimer are illustrated by Quentin Blake, and have been shown on the BBC as Jackanory and drama series. Others including the much loved Necklace of Raindrops and award winning Kingdom Under the Sea are illustrated by Jan Pieńkowski.
Her many novels for adults include several that continue or complement novels by Jane Austen. These include Mansfield Revisited and Jane Fairfax.
Aiken was a lifelong fan of ghost stories. She set her adult supernatural novel The Haunting of Lamb House at Lamb House in Rye (now a National Trust property). This ghost story recounts in fictional form an alleged haunting experienced by two former residents of the house, Henry James and E. F. Benson, both of whom also wrote ghost stories. Aiken's father, Conrad Aiken, also authored a small number of notable ghost stories.
Medlemmar
Diskussioner
THE DEEP ONES: "Cold Flame" by Joan Aiken i The Weird Tradition (september 2022)
THE DEEP ONES: "Reading in Bed" by Joan Aiken i The Weird Tradition (juni 2022)
Joan Aiken romance- main female lead dies i Name that Book (mars 2016)
Recensioner
My previous acquaintance with the work of this author was with her children's novels set in an alternate version of British history. This collection of short stories published in 1979 is described as 'stories of horror, suspense and fantasy' but rather than outright horror, the effect is more of creepiness. Quite a few are inconclusive and fizzle out at the end with no definitive notion of what happened. The one which makes the closest approach to horror is the first in the collection, 'The Lodgers', about some decidedly nasty characters who move in when a mother is overworked and harried by both her boss at work and the simultaneous infectious illnesses of her two children. Rather ahead of its time in its foregrounding of a single parent.
Some stories are predictable such as 'The Sewanne Glide', where the interest is in the execution and characterisation, or 'Jugged Hare' where a woman with a violent husband tempts fate by having an affair. Some are downright odd, for example, 'Listening', seemingly a disconnected series of events where the teacher protagonist has to sit in on another teacher's lesson to assess her after witnessing an animal's upsetting death enroute - then sees her crumble under a devastating personal tragedy, and then sees himself portrayed rather oddly in a museum. Unsettling, but you are left wondering what it was all about. 'A Game of Black and White' about a boy's misadventures in a world that suddenly turns into a nightmare under the influence of a total solar eclipse is similar in effect.
Others are in the style of fairy tales - 'The Rented Swan' for example, or are more or less traditional ghost stories - 'The Companion'. 'He' is a cautionary folktale about the personal penalties for taking revenge. In 'The Story about Caruso' a woman is driven to take extreme action by the stress of caring for an impossible relative. 'Mrs Considine' is an inconsequential tale of the friendship between an old lady and a young girl who has prophetic dreams, almost a 'tell it by numbers' - the denoument is spelled out in advance although we don't get to actually see it, but it left a feeling of "So what?"
Two stories, 'Power Cut' and 'A Train Full of War-Lords', feature blind protagonists at the mercy of others in their environment, even members of their own families who don't intend their malicious effects - luckily averted quite by chance in the second of the two stories. 'Who Goes Down this Dark Road' and 'The Helper' are downright weird - in the first, we don't really know the reason for the tragedy that has ruined the protagonist's life or its connection with a malicious young woman, daughter of a French Professor, or why he should still intend to help them by registering the Professor's invention of a mechanical companion at the UK Patent Office where he works, and it is unclear whether we are dealing with a haunting or the psychological effects of guilt by the end. The second is a short tale based on a very peculiar "What if?" question posed and answered.
Probably the most effective tale in the collection is 'Time to Laugh', the story of what happens to a boy with criminal tendencies who decides to explore the local - not exactly haunted - house with creepy consequences. Overall a 3-star rating.… (mer)
Some stories are predictable such as 'The Sewanne Glide', where the interest is in the execution and characterisation, or 'Jugged Hare' where a woman with a violent husband tempts fate by having an affair. Some are downright odd, for example, 'Listening', seemingly a disconnected series of events where the teacher protagonist has to sit in on another teacher's lesson to assess her after witnessing an animal's upsetting death enroute - then sees her crumble under a devastating personal tragedy, and then sees himself portrayed rather oddly in a museum. Unsettling, but you are left wondering what it was all about. 'A Game of Black and White' about a boy's misadventures in a world that suddenly turns into a nightmare under the influence of a total solar eclipse is similar in effect.
Others are in the style of fairy tales - 'The Rented Swan' for example, or are more or less traditional ghost stories - 'The Companion'. 'He' is a cautionary folktale about the personal penalties for taking revenge. In 'The Story about Caruso' a woman is driven to take extreme action by the stress of caring for an impossible relative. 'Mrs Considine' is an inconsequential tale of the friendship between an old lady and a young girl who has prophetic dreams, almost a 'tell it by numbers' - the denoument is spelled out in advance although we don't get to actually see it, but it left a feeling of "So what?"
Two stories, 'Power Cut' and 'A Train Full of War-Lords', feature blind protagonists at the mercy of others in their environment, even members of their own families who don't intend their malicious effects - luckily averted quite by chance in the second of the two stories. 'Who Goes Down this Dark Road' and 'The Helper' are downright weird - in the first, we don't really know the reason for the tragedy that has ruined the protagonist's life or its connection with a malicious young woman, daughter of a French Professor, or why he should still intend to help them by registering the Professor's invention of a mechanical companion at the UK Patent Office where he works, and it is unclear whether we are dealing with a haunting or the psychological effects of guilt by the end. The second is a short tale based on a very peculiar "What if?" question posed and answered.
Probably the most effective tale in the collection is 'Time to Laugh', the story of what happens to a boy with criminal tendencies who decides to explore the local - not exactly haunted - house with creepy consequences. Overall a 3-star rating.… (mer)
A good, tidy story. Less wolfish than I remember, I'm sorry to say. More like a 3 1/2, but only because I am no longer a child who is completely entranced by orphans, cruel mistresses, parent-less adventures, shipwrecks, and disguises. What a minute, I am still entranced by these things!
When Dido Twite sets foot back on English soil, more mischief awaits. As her friend Captain Hughes recovers from a carriage accident, Dido stays at the Dogkennel Cottages and meets the odd inhabitants of Tegleaze Manor: strange old Lady Tegleaze, her nephew, Tobit, and his wizened, witchy nurse, Sannie. Soon suspicious things happen. A priceless miniature is stolen. Tobit is framed and then kidnapped. A twin sister is found. And when Dido catches a glimpse of her rascally father in Petworth, she is sure she's in the midst of another Hanoverian plot. Can she get to London to warn the king and save St. Paul's Cathedral from sliding into the Thames?… (mer)
Listor
Ghosts (1)
Books with Twins (1)
Best Young Adult (1)
Edgar Award (1)
grrrrrl power (1)
1960s (1)
Austenland (5)
Children's Humor (4)
Elevenses (3)
Female Author (3)
Sonlight Books (2)
Spirit of Place (1)
Priser
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Associerade författare
Statistik
- Verk
- 203
- Även av
- 122
- Medlemmar
- 17,641
- Popularitet
- #1,251
- Betyg
- 3.9
- Recensioner
- 405
- ISBN
- 1,003
- Språk
- 20
- Favoritmärkt
- 76
Unlike the children's books of today - this was first published in the early 1960s - the whole thing proceeds at a riproaring pace with very little build-up. We plunge straight into the situation: the wealthy parents of Bonnie are about to embark on a trip abroad for the mother's health, and a governess, Miss Slighcarp, who is also a distant relation, has been hired to run the estate and teach Bonnie and her cousin, Sylvia. Meanwhile, Sylvia, raised by the impoverished sister of Bonnie's father, who is too proud to admit her situation, is put aboard a train to travel to the country estate. A seemingly jovial man travels in the same compartment and makes himself useful when the train is attacked by wolves, but soon after arrival, both he and the governess show their true colours and the adventure is underway, incorporating boys who live in the woods, geese, a Dickensian orphange and a shipwreck, among other elements.
The story is told in bold strokes with melodrama, larger than life villains, faithful retainers who are indispensible to the children's safety, and parents or guardians who are conveniently got out of the way by various mechanisms. The only slight detraction is that the wolves of the title fade away by the time the weather warms, and the book does not feature Dido Twite, who I recall as being the streetwise heroine of Aiken's alternative 19th century tales, but who is not introduced until Black Hearts in Battersea. But otherwise an engaging and speedy read which earns 4 stars from me.… (mer)