{"id":2265,"date":"2014-12-05T08:22:40","date_gmt":"2014-12-05T14:22:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bookologymagazine.com\/resources\/authors-emeritus\/?p=2265"},"modified":"2014-12-05T08:22:40","modified_gmt":"2014-12-05T14:22:40","slug":"jones-diana-wynne","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bookologymagazine.com\/resources\/authors-emeritus\/jones-diana-wynne\/","title":{"rendered":"Jones, Diana Wynne"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n\n\n
\"Diana<\/td>\n\"Cart<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
\"Howl's<\/td>\n\"The<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

I first read a book by Diana Wynne Jones in 1976. It was Cart and Cwidder<\/em> and I was determined to find everything else she had written. But she was an English writer and she had only written four\u00a0other books at that point, so her books were not easy to find. I waited, not patiently. Atheneum published Drowned Ammet<\/em> and The Spellcoats<\/em>. Reading them, I realized that this was a substantial writer. Ms. Wynne Jones had an astounding ability to weave a story. Her stories pull you in from the first paragraph.<\/p>\n

Drowned Ammet<\/em>: \u201dPeople may wonder how Mitt came to join in the Holand Sea Festival, carrying a bomb,\u00a0and what he thought he was doing. Mitt wondered himself by the end.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Homeward Bounders<\/em>: \u201dHave you heard of the Flying Dutchman? No? Nor of the Wandering Jew? Well, it doesn\u2019t matter. I\u2019ll tell you about them in the right place; and about Helen and Joris, Adam and Konstam, and Vanessa, the sister Adam wanted to sell as a slave. They were all Homeward Bounders like me. And I\u2019ll tell about Them too, who made us that way.\u201d<\/p>\n

Howl\u2019s Moving Castle<\/em>: \u201dIn the land of Ingary, where such things as seven-league boots and cloaks of invisibility really exist, it is quite a misfortune to be born the eldest of three. Everyone knows you are the one who will fail first, and worst, if the three of you set out to seek your fortunes.\u201d<\/p>\n

What\u2019s more, the fantasy in her books is original. They were stories unlike others I\u2019d run across. Even when
she was writing one of her loving send-ups of gamers or convention-goers, she found the trail of unexpected delight in each of her books. You may watch the movie Howl\u2019s Moving Castle<\/em> (Boston Globe Horn Book Honor), but it will not thrill you in the same way the book does. Ms. Wynne Jones\u2019 sense of humor, her imagination, the way she finds the right word for the moment \u2026\u00a0these are not evident in the movie.<\/p>\n

Different readers will name a different series of her books, or a single title, as their favorite. Whether it\u2019s the Chrestomanci books (read Charmed Life<\/em> first; it won the Guardian Medal) or the Dalemark Quartet (I enjoy Cart and Cwidder<\/em> the most) or one of the Castle books (there are three) or the Derkholm books (Dark Lord of Derkholm<\/em> is a fan favorite) or Hexwood<\/em> or Enchanted Glass<\/em> (most recently published and immensely enjoyable), you won\u2019t find anything predictable in her storytelling.<\/p>\n

Born in 1934, she was a child who experienced war in England. The oldest of three sisters, her parents were teachers. As Ms. Wynne Jones remembers her parents, they weren\u2019t particularly loving, nor did they coddle their children. She felt that she and her sisters raised themselves to a great extent. Born in London, they moved to Wales, to avoid the war, then went to York, in the Lake District. The family lived in John Ruskin\u2019s secretary\u2019s house. The children of that house were models for the famous four in Swallows and Amazons<\/em>\u2014John, Susan, Tilly, and Roger\u2014and Diana Wynne Jones was reminded of this connection periodically at home and at school.<\/p>\n

She was a curious reader, trying everything she could, both fiction and nonfiction, classical and current. At
the age of eight, she knew quite clearly that she was going to be a writer. As she wrote, \u201dIt was not a decision, or even a revelation. It was more as if my future self had leaned back from the years ahead and quietly informed me what she was. In calm certainty, I went and told my parents. \u2019You haven\u2019t got it in you,\u2019 my mother said. My father bellowed with laughter. He had a patriarch\u2019s view of girls: they were not really meant to do anything.\u201d<\/p>\n

Eventually, in 1953, she attended St. Anne\u2019s College, Oxford. There she had the good fortune to listen to lectures by C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien.<\/p>\n

Shortly after graduation, she met John Burrows. \u201d… instantly I knew I was going to marry this man. It was
the same calm and absolute certainty that I had had when I was eight. And it rather irked me, because I hadn\u2019t even looked at him properly and I didn\u2019t know whether I liked him, let alone loved him.\u201d She did. They married in 1956, lived for a short time in several English cities, and traveled for a bit to America where Mr. Burrows taught at Yale. In 1976, the couple moved to Bristol, where they lived up until the time of her death. They had three sons, all of whom are grown.<\/p>\n

Diagnosed with lung cancer in 2009, she continued to write, planning out her next books. She died on March 26, 2011.<\/p>\n

Diana Wynne Jones\u2019 body of work is stout and hale. We, her readers, are grateful.<\/p>\n

\u2014\u00a0Vicki Palmquist<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I first read a book by Diana Wynne Jones in 1976. It was Cart and Cwidder and I was determined to find everything else she had written. But she was an English writer and she had only written four\u00a0other books at that point, so her books were not easy to find. I waited, not patiently. … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1042],"tags":[1546,1540,1013,1539,1547,432,408,1548,1549,1550,1538,1542,1552,480,598,467,1551,1544,1545,1554,1557,1553,1556,1543,1555,1346,1541],"class_list":["post-2265","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-j","tag-boston-globe-horn-book-honor","tag-britain","tag-c-s-lewis","tag-cart-and-cwidder","tag-charmed-life","tag-childrens-books","tag-childrens-literature","tag-chrestomanci","tag-dalemark-quartet","tag-dark-lord-of-derkholm","tag-diana-wynne-jones","tag-drowned-ammet","tag-enchanted-glass","tag-england","tag-fantasy","tag-fiction","tag-hexwood","tag-homeward-bounders","tag-howls-moving-castle","tag-j-r-r-tolkien","tag-john-burrows","tag-john-ruskin","tag-oxford","tag-spellcoats","tag-st-annes-college","tag-swallows-and-amazons","tag-united-kingdom"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p51Nzs-Ax","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bookologymagazine.com\/resources\/authors-emeritus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2265","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bookologymagazine.com\/resources\/authors-emeritus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bookologymagazine.com\/resources\/authors-emeritus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bookologymagazine.com\/resources\/authors-emeritus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bookologymagazine.com\/resources\/authors-emeritus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2265"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.bookologymagazine.com\/resources\/authors-emeritus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2265\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bookologymagazine.com\/resources\/authors-emeritus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2265"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bookologymagazine.com\/resources\/authors-emeritus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2265"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bookologymagazine.com\/resources\/authors-emeritus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2265"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}