Joan Aiken

Joan Aiken MBE
Aiken at The Hermitage, her home, in 1984
Born	Joan Delano Aiken (1924-09-04)4 September 1924 Rye, East Sussex, England
Died	4 January 2004 (2004-01-05) (aged 79) Petworth, West Sussex
Occupation	Writer
Nationality	British
Period	1955–2004
Genres	Alternate history, children's literature, supernatural fiction
Notable work(s)	The Wolves of Willoughby Chase (Wolves Chronicles)
Notable award(s)	Guardian Prize 1969
www.joanaiken.com

Joan Delano Aiken MBE (4 September 1924 – 4 January 2004) was an English writer specialising in supernatural fiction and children's alternate history novels. In 1999 she was awarded an MBE for her services to children's literature.^[1] For The Whispering Mountain, published by Jonathan Cape in 1968, she won the Guardian Children's Fiction Prize, a once-in-a-lifetime book award judged by a panel of British children's writers,^[2] and she was a commended runner-up for the Carnegie Medal from the Library Association, recognising the year's best children's book by a British subject.^{[3][lower-alpha 1]} She won an Edgar Allan Poe Award (1972) for Night Fall.

Biography

Aiken was born in Mermaid Street in Rye, East Sussex, on 4 September 1924. Her father was the American Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Conrad Aiken (1889–1973). Her older brother was the writer John Aiken (1913–1990) and her older sister was the writer Jane Aiken Hodge (1917–2009). Their mother, Canadian-born Jessie MacDonald (1889–1970), was a Master's graduate from Radcliffe College. Jessie and Conrad's marriage was dissolved in 1929, and Jessie married the English writer Martin Armstrong in 1930. Conrad Aiken went on to marry twice more. Together with her brother John and her sister Jane, Joan Aiken wrote Conrad Aiken Remembered (1989), a short appreciation of their father.

Aiken was taught at home by her mother until the age of twelve and from 1936 to 1940 at Wychwood School for girls in Oxford. She did not attend university. Writing stories from an early age, she finished her first full-length novel when she was sixteen and had her first short story for adults accepted for publication when she was seventeen.^{[citation needed]} In 1941 her first children's story was broadcast on the BBC's Children's Hour.^[4]

Aiken worked for the United Nations Information Centre (UNIC) in London between 1943 and 1949. In 1945 she married Ronald George Brown, a journalist who was also working at UNIC. They had two children before he died in 1955.

After her husband's death Aiken joined the magazine Argosy, where she worked in various editorial capacities and, she later said, learned her trade as a writer. The magazine was one of many in which she published short stories between 1955 and 1960. During this time she also published her first two collections of children's stories and began work on a children's novel, initially titled Bonnie Green, which was later published in 1962 as The Wolves of Willoughby Chase. By then she was able to write full-time from home, producing two or three books a year for the rest of her life, mainly children's books and thrillers, but also many articles, introductions and talks on children's literature, and on the work of Jane Austen.

Aiken married the New York landscape painter and teacher Julius Goldstein in 1976. They divided their time between her home, The Hermitage in Petworth, West Sussex, and New York. He died in 2001.

Aiken died at home at the age of 79. She was survived by her two children.

Writings

Joan Aiken produced more than a hundred books, including more than a dozen collections of fantasy stories, plays and poems, and modern and historical novels for adults and children. She was a lifelong fan of ghost stories, particularly those of M. R. James, Fitz James O'Brien and Nugent Barker.

Some of her books focus on spine-chilling or supernatural events, including The Windscreen Weepers (stories, 1969), The Shadow Guests (novel, 1980), A Whisper in the Night (stories, 1982), and A Creepy Company (stories, 1993, with variant contents in its US and UK editions). 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.

However, many of Joan Aiken's most popular books, including the Wolves Chronicles^[5] (also known as The Wolves of Willoughby Chase series or the James III series), are set in an elaborate alternate history of Britain in which James II was never deposed in the Glorious Revolution, but supporters of the House of Hanover continually agitate against the monarchy. These books also toy with the geography of London, adding a Canal District among other features. Wolves have invaded the country from Europe via the newly built Channel Tunnel. Dido Twite is the intrepid cockney heroine of much of the series.

In a review of Midwinter Nightingale for the School Library Journal Susan Patron praised the characterisations and the suspenseful plot, and noted that, “Although the titles in the ‘Wolves’ series may be read independently”, readers may want to read the earlier books first.^[6]

Aiken's series of children's books about Arabel and Mortimer were illustrated by Quentin Blake. Others were illustrated by Jan Pieńkowski and Pat Marriott. Pieńkowski won the foremost British award for children's book illustration, the Greenaway Medal, for The Kingdom Under the Sea and other stories (Jonathan Cape, 1971), a collection of "unique fairy tales from Eastern Europe and Russia" retold by Aiken.^[7]

Aiken participated in the Puffin Book Club's annual Children's Literature Summer Camp, run by Colony Holidays, predecessor to ATE Superweeks, along with other popular children's authors such as Ian Serraillier and Clive King.^[8]

Aiken's many novels for adults include several that continue or complement novels by Jane Austen. These include Mansfield Revisited and Jane Fairfax.

Selected works

Wolves Chronicles

The Wolves Chronicles vary in length from less than 150 pages to more than 250 pages.^[5] Here the novels are listed in narrative order.

• The Whispering Mountain (Jonathan Cape, 1968), a prequel to the series
• The Wolves of Willoughby Chase (Jonathan Cape, 1962)^[9]
• Black Hearts in Battersea (1964)
• Nightbirds on Nantucket (1966)
• The Stolen Lake (1981)
• Limbo Lodge (1999); U.S. title, Dangerous Games
• The Cuckoo Tree (1971)
• Dido and Pa (1986)
• Is (1992); U.S. title, Is Underground
• Cold Shoulder Road (1995)
• Midwinter Nightingale (2003)
• The Witch of Clatteringshaws (2005)

Historical novel

• Midnight Is a Place (1976)

This is a historical novel for children set in 19th-century London. "Joan Aiken follows all the conventions of Dickensian fiction with just a little extra to satisfy jaded contemporary tastes. The Grimsby mansion at Midnight Court houses not one, but two unjustly disinherited orphans ...".^[10]

See also

Notes

References

Citations

• Bleiler, Richard, ed. (2003). Supernatural Fiction Writers: Contemporary Fantasy and Horror. New York: Charles Scribners & Thomson/Gale. pp. 21–31 in Vol 1 of 2. ISBN 0-684-31252-2. 

• Tymn, Marshall B.; Kenneth J. Zahorski and Robert H. Boyer (1979). Fantasy Literature: A Core Collection and Reference Guide. New York: R.R. Bowker Co. p. 39. ISBN 0-8352-1431-1.  Cite uses deprecated parameters (help)

External links

• Official website
• Obituary, Daily Telegraph, 6 January 2004
• Obituary and Appreciation, The Guardian, 7 & 9 January 2004
• Obituary, The Times, 9 January 2004
• Obituary, The Independent, 10 January 2004
• Joan Aiken – a partial bibliography
• Joan Aiken at Fantastic Fiction
• Retrospective: The Endless Imagination of Joan Aiken at Books For Keeps
• Joan Aiken at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database
• Joan Aiken at the Internet Book List