Diana Wynne Jones

Jones was born in London, the daughter of Marjorie (née Jackson) and Richard Aneurin Jones, both of whom were teachers. When war was announced, shortly after her fifth birthday, she was evacuated to Pontarddulais in Wales where her grandfather was a minister at a chapel. She did not live long in Wales due to a family dispute,Reflections

By Diana Wynne Jones – 2012 and thereafter moved several times, including periods in the Lake District, in York, and back to London. In 1943 her family finally settled in Thaxted, Essex, where her parents worked running an educational conference centre.{{cite news |url=https://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/diana-wynne-jones-doyenne-of-fantasy-writers-whose-books-for-children-paved-the-way-for-jk-rowling-2257675.html |title=Diana Wynne Jones: Doyenne of fantasy writers whose books for children paved the way for JK Rowling |last=Butler |first=Charlie |author-link=Catherine Butler |newspaper=The Independent |date=31 March 2011 |access-date=3 June 2013 |archive-date=25 March 2019 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190325060955/https://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/diana-wynne-jones-doyenne-of-fantasy-writers-whose-books-for-children-paved-the-way-for-jk-rowling-2257675.html |url-status=live }} There, Jones and her two younger sisters Isobel (later Professor Isobel Armstrong, the literary critic) and Ursula (later an actress and a children's writer) spent a childhood left chiefly to their own devices.

After attending Friends' School, Saffron Walden, she studied English at St Anne's College, Oxford, where she attended lectures by both C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien before graduating in 1956.{{cite web |url=https://www.bbc.co.uk/bristol/content/goingout/2003/03/05/books.shtml |title=Wrestling with an angel |last=Parsons |first=Caron |publisher=BBC |work=Going Out in Bristol |date=27 March 2003 |access-date=3 June 2013 |archive-date=24 October 2013 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20131024131315/http://www.bbc.co.uk/bristol/content/goingout/2003/03/05/books.shtml |url-status=live }} In the same year she married John Burrow, a prominent scholar of medieval literature, with whom she had three sons, Richard, Michael and Colin. After a brief period in London, in 1957 the couple returned to Oxford, where they stayed until moving to Bristol in 1976.

{{quote box|

"He spread his arms and language rolled from him, sonorous, magnificent, and rhythmic.. for years after that, I used to dream regularly that a piece of my bedroom wall slid aside revealing my grandfather declaiming in Welsh, and I knew he was declaiming about my sins. At the bottom of my mind there is always a flow of spoken language that is not English, rolling in majestic paragraphs and resounding with splendid polysyllables. I listen to it like music when I write."

- An excerpt from her autobiography detailing her time at Wales with her grandfather.|source=Diana Wynne Jones, Reflections on the magic of writing – Random House, 2012.{{cite book|title=Diana Wynne Jones, Reflections on the magic of writing – Random House|date=2012|isbn=978-0-385-65403-6 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=cV7qAAAAQBAJ|via=Google Books|last1=Jones |first1=Diana Wynne |publisher=David Fickling Books }}

|align=right|width=40%}}

Jones started writing during the mid-1960s "mostly to keep [her] sanity", when the youngest of her three children was about two years old and the family lived in a house owned by an Oxford college. Besides the children, she felt harried by the crises of adults in the household: a sick husband, a mother-in-law, a sister, and a friend with daughter. Her first book was a novel for adults published by Macmillan in 1970, entitled Changeover. It originated as the British Empire was divesting colonies; she recalled in 2004 that it had "seemed like every month, we would hear that yet another small island or tiny country had been granted independence." Changeover is set in a fictional African colony during transition, and what begins as a memo about the problem of how to "mark changeover" ceremonially is misunderstood to be about the threat of a terrorist named Mark Changeover. It is a farce with a large cast of characters, featuring government, police, and army bureaucracies; sex, politics, and news. In 1965, when Rhodesia declared independence unilaterally (one of the last colonies and not tiny), "I felt as if the book were coming true as I wrote it."Jones, D. W. (2004). "Introduction: The Origins of Changeover". Changeover [1970]. London: Moondust Books. {{ISBN|0-9547498-0-4}}.

The Harry Potter books are frequently compared to the works of Diana Wynne Jones. Many of her earlier children's books were out of print in recent years, but have now been re-issued for the young audience whose interest in fantasy and reading was spurred by Harry Potter.{{cite news |url=https://www.theguardian.com/parents/story/0,3605,941676,00.html |title=Wynne-ing ways: Author of the month Diana Wynne Jones |work=The Guardian|date=23 April 2003 |author-link=Dina Rabinovitch |last=Rabinovitch |first=Dina |access-date=16 August 2014}}de Lint, Charles (January 2000). "Books To Look For". Fantasy & Science Fiction. January 2000.
  [http://www.sfsite.com/fsf/2000/cdl0001.htm Reprint] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100123164104/http://www.sfsite.com/fsf/2000/cdl0001.htm |date=23 January 2010 }} at SFsite.com retrieved 2014-12-18.

Jones's works are also compared to those of Robin McKinley and Neil Gaiman. She was friends with both McKinley{{cite web |url=http://robinmckinleysblog.com/2010/09/23/fame-sort-of/ |title=fame. sort of. |author=McKinley, Robin |work=Robin McKinley: Days in the Life* *with footnotes |publisher=Robinmckinleysblog.com |date=23 September 2010 |access-date=16 August 2014 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171116074725/http://robinmckinleysblog.com/2010/09/23/fame-sort-of/ |archive-date=16 November 2017 |url-status=dead }} and Gaiman, and Jones and Gaiman were fans of each other's work; she dedicated her 1993 novel Hexwood to him after something he said in conversation inspired a key part of the plot.Gaiman, Neil [date unknown]. [Title unknown]. The Magian Line 2.2. Refrain: "But I've got a copy of Hexwood, dedicated to me by Diana Wynne Jones". Hexwood was published in 1993.
  [http://www.suberic.net/dwj/personal.html#gaiman Reprint] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20161009151501/http://suberic.net/dwj/personal.html#gaiman |date=9 October 2016 }} as "Neil's Thankyou pome" at Chrestomanci Castle retrieved 2014-12-18. Gaiman had already dedicated his 1991 four-part comic book mini-series The Books of Magic to "four witches", of whom Jones was one.{{cite web |last=Gaiman |first=Neil |url=http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2003/03/your-mention-of-miyazaki-and-howls.asp |title=untitled |work=Neil Gaiman's Journal |publisher=Neil Gaiman (journal.neilgaiman.com) |date=13 March 2003 |access-date=16 August 2014 |archive-date=25 March 2019 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190325060956/http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2003/03/your-mention-of-miyazaki-and-howls.asp |url-status=live }}

For Charmed Life, the first Chrestomanci novel, Jones won the 1978 Guardian Children's Fiction Prize, a once-in-a-lifetime award by The Guardian newspaper that is judged by a panel of children's writers. Three times she was a commended runner-up{{efn|name=HC}} for the Carnegie Medal from the Library Association, recognising the year's best children's book: for Dogsbody (1975), Charmed Life (1977), and the fourth Chrestomanci book The Lives of Christopher Chant (1988). She won the Mythopoeic Fantasy Award, children's section, in 1996 for The Crown of Dalemark (concluding that series) and in 1999 for Dark Lord of Derkholm; in four other years she was a finalist for the annual literary award by the Mythopoeic Society.{{efn|name=mythopoeic}}

The 1986 novel Howl's Moving Castle was inspired by a boy at a school she was visiting, who asked her to write a book called The Moving Castle.{{cite book|last1=Jones|first1=Diana Wynne|title=Howl's Moving Castle|url=https://archive.org/details/howlsmovingcastl00jone|url-access=registration|date=1986|publisher=New York : Greenwillow Books|isbn=978-0-7848-2484-9}} It was published first by Greenwillow in the U.S., where it was a runner-up for the annual Boston Globe–Horn Book Award in children's fiction. In 2004, Hayao Miyazaki made the Japanese-language animated movie Howl's Moving Castle, which was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature.{{cite web |title=Howl's Moving Castle Awards |url=https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0347149/awards?ref_=tt_awd |website=IMDb |publisher=IMDb.com, Inc. |access-date=16 June 2019 |archive-date=22 August 2019 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190822213222/https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0347149/awards?ref_=tt_awd |url-status=live }} A version dubbed in English was released in the UK and US in 2005, with the voice of Howl performed by Christian Bale.[https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0347149/fullcredits "Howl's Moving Castle (2004): Full Cast & Crew"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190413001739/https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0347149/fullcredits |date=13 April 2019 }}. Internet Movie Database. Retrieved 10 December 2014. Next year Jones and the novel won the annual Phoenix Award from the Children's Literature Association, recognising the best children's book published twenty years earlier that did not win a major award (named for mythical bird phoenix to suggest the book's rise from obscurity).

Fire and Hemlock had been the 2005 Phoenix runner-up. It is a novel based on Scottish ballads, and was a Mythopoeic Fantasy finalist in its own time.{{efn|name=mythopoeic}}

Archer's Goon (1984) was a runner-up for that year's Horn Book Award. It was adapted for television in 1992.{{cite web |title=Archer's Goon (TV series 1992– ) |date=8 January 1992 |url=https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0315647 |publisher=Internet Movie Database |access-date=27 April 2013 |archive-date=27 July 2011 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110727020723/http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0315647/ |url-status=live }} One Jones fansite believes it to be "the only tv adaptation (so far) of one of Diana's books".[http://www.leemac.freeserve.co.uk/ Home page] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20050619233203/http://www.leemac.freeserve.co.uk/ |date=19 June 2005 }}, "More Stuff" in the right margin. The Diana Wynne Jones Fansite. Retrieved 18 December 2014.

Jones's book on clichés in fantasy fiction, The Tough Guide To Fantasyland (nonfiction), has a cult following among writers and critics, despite initially being difficult to find due to an erratic printing history. It was reissued in the UK, and has been reissued in the United States in 2006 by Firebird Books. The Firebird edition has additional material and a completely new design, including a new map.{{Cite web|title=The Tough Guide to Fantasyland by Diana Wynne Jones: 9780142407226 {{!}} PenguinRandomHouse.com: Books|url=https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/295676/the-tough-guide-to-fantasyland-by-diana-wynne-jones/|access-date=4 August 2020|website=PenguinRandomhouse.com|language=en-US|archive-date=22 June 2020|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200622060639/https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/295676/the-tough-guide-to-fantasyland-by-diana-wynne-jones/|url-status=live}}

The British Fantasy Society recognised her significant impact on fantasy with its Karl Edward Wagner Award in 1999.{{Cite web|url=https://www.harpercollins.co.uk/author/cr-100375/diana-wynne-jones/|title=Diana Wynne Jones Books & Biography|website=HarperCollins|access-date=14 September 2019}}{{dead link|date=September 2023 |bot=InternetArchiveBot |fix-attempted=yes }} She received an honorary D.Litt from the University of Bristol in July 2006[http://www.bristol.ac.uk/pace/graduation/honorary-degrees/graduates.html "Honorary graduates" (1995–present)] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160831074649/http://www.bristol.ac.uk/pace/graduation/honorary-degrees/graduates.html |date=31 August 2016 }}. Public and Ceremonial Events Office. University of Bristol (bristol.ac.uk). Retrieved 18 December 2014. and the World Fantasy Award for Life Achievement in 2007.

In August 2014, Google commemorated Jones with a Google Doodle created by Google artist Sophie Diao.{{Cite web|title=Google Doodles|url=http://www.sophiediao.com/google-doodles|access-date=4 August 2020|website=Sophie Diao|language=en-US|archive-date=21 October 2019|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20191021021832/http://www.sophiediao.com/google-doodles|url-status=live}}

Jones was diagnosed with lung cancer in the early summer of 2009.{{cite news |last=Russell |first=Imogen |url=https://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2009/jul/09/fantastic-diana-wynne-jones |title=A fantastic weekend with Diana Wynne Jones |work=guardian.co.uk |date=9 July 2009 |access-date=15 August 2014 |archive-date=25 March 2019 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190325060954/https://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2009/jul/09/fantastic-diana-wynne-jones |url-status=live }} She underwent surgery in July and reported to friends that the procedure had been successful.{{cite web |url=http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2009/07/eleven-days-or-thereabouts.html |work=Neil Gaiman's Journal |title=Eleven Days or Thereabouts |author=Gaiman, Neil |publisher=Neil Gaiman (journal.neilgaiman.com) |date=23 July 2009 |access-date=16 August 2014 |archive-date=25 March 2019 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190325060955/http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2009/07/eleven-days-or-thereabouts.html |url-status=live }} However, in June 2010 she announced that she would be discontinuing chemotherapy because it only made her feel ill.{{cite web |last=Langford |first=David |author-link=David Langford |date=11 June 2010 |title=Ansible 275 |url=http://news.ansible.co.uk/a275.html |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140701074110/http://news.ansible.co.uk/a275.html |archive-date=1 July 2014 |access-date=15 August 2014 |publisher=News.ansible.co.uk}} She died on 26 March 2011 from the disease.

The story in progress when she became too ill to write, The Islands of Chaldea, was completed by her sister Ursula Jones in 2014. Interviewed by The Guardian in June 2013 after she finished the Chaldea story, Ursula Jones said that "other things were coming to light ... She left behind a mass of stuff," but no further new works were published.

{{Main|Diana Wynne Jones bibliography}}

Jones has been nominated for and also won multiple awards for her various works.

{{notelist|notes=

{{efn|name=HC |1=

Today there are usually eight books on the Carnegie shortlist.

According to CCSU, some runners-up through 2002 were Commended (from 1955) or Highly Commended (from 1966); the latter distinction became approximately annual in 1979. There were about 160 commendations of both kinds in 48 years including two for 1975, three for 1977, and six for 1988.

}}

{{efn|name=mythopoeic |1=

Fire and Hemlock was one of six finalists for the Mythopoeic Award in 1986, when there was a single Fantasy award, and Jones was five times one of four or five finalists in the Children's category after dual fiction awards were introduced in 1992.

}}

}}

{{reflist|refs=

{{cite magazine

|url=http://archive.hbook.com/bghb/past/past.asp

|title=Boston Globe–Horn Book Awards Winners and Honor Books 1967 to present

|magazine=The Horn Book

|access-date=23 December 2012

|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20111019092012/http://archive.hbook.com/bghb/past/past.asp

|archive-date=19 October 2011

|url-status=dead

}}

{{cite web

|title=Carnegie Medal Award

|publisher=Curriculum Lab, CCSU Burritt Library

|url=http://web.ccsu.edu/library/nadeau/award%20books/CarnegieMedal.htm

|access-date=9 August 2012

|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190327101434/http://web.ccsu.edu/library/nadeau/award%20books/CarnegieMedal.htm

|archive-date=27 March 2019

|url-status=dead

}}

{{cite news

|title=Diana Wynne Jones's final book completed by sister

|first=Alison

|last=Flood

|date=24 June 2013

|work=The Guardian

|url=https://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/jun/24/diana-wynne-jones-final-book-sister

|access-date=22 February 2021

|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210212021411/https://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/jun/24/diana-wynne-jones-final-book-sister

|archive-date=12 February 2021

|url-status=live

}}

{{cite news

|url=https://www.theguardian.com/books/2011/mar/27/diana-wynne-jones-obituary

|title=Diana Wynne Jones obituary

|author-link=Christopher Priest (novelist)

|last=Priest

|first=Christopher

|date=27 March 2011

|access-date=27 March 2011

|newspaper=The Guardian

|archive-date=25 March 2019

|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190325060955/https://www.theguardian.com/books/2011/mar/27/diana-wynne-jones-obituary

|url-status=live

}}

{{cite web

|url=http://www.childlitassn.org/phoenix-award

|title=Phoenix Award

|access-date=22 February 2021

|publisher=Children's Literature Association

|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210205090945/https://www.childlitassn.org/phoenix-award

|archive-date=5 February 2021

|url-status=live

}}

{{cite news

|url=https://www.theguardian.com/books/2001/mar/12/guardianchildrensfictionprize2001.guardianchildrensfictionprize

|title=Guardian children's fiction prize relaunched: Entry details and list of past winners

|date=12 March 2001

|access-date=15 August 2014

|archive-date=27 March 2019

|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190327090634/https://www.theguardian.com/books/2001/mar/12/guardianchildrensfictionprize2001.guardianchildrensfictionprize

|url-status=live

}}

{{cite web

|title=Diana Wynne Jones

|date=31 August 2020

|publisher=Science Fiction Awards Database

|url=http://www.sfadb.com/Diana_Wynne_Jones

|access-date=22 February 2021

|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201108073204/http://www.sfadb.com/Diana_Wynne_Jones

|archive-date=8 November 2020

|url-status=live

}}

}}

• {{anchor|homepage}} {{cite web |url=http://www.suberic.net/dwj/index.html |title=Chrestomanci Castle |website=The Diana Wynne Jones Homepage, or Travels in the Land of Ingary |first=Deborah |last=Kaplan }}
• {{anchor|fansite}} {{cite web |url=http://www.leemac.freeserve.co.uk/ |title=The Diana Wynne Jones Fansite |access-date=22 February 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160725213948/http://www.leemac.freeserve.co.uk/ |archive-date=25 July 2016 |url-status=dead }} Formerly The Official Diana Wynne Jones Fansite.

• {{cite book

| last = Butler

| first = Charles

| author-link = Charles Butler (author)

| title = Four British Fantasists: Place and Culture in the Children's Fantasies of Penelope Lively, Alan Garner, Diana Wynne Jones, and Susan Cooper

| url = https://archive.org/details/fourbritishfanta0000butl

| url-access = registration

| publisher = Scarecrow Press

| year = 2006

| isbn = 0-8108-5242-X

}}

• {{cite book

| last = Mendlesohn

| first = Farah

| author-link = Farah Mendlesohn

| title = Diana Wynne Jones: Children's Literature and the Fantastic Tradition

| publisher = Routledge

| year = 2005

| isbn = 0-415-97023-7

}}

• {{cite book

| editor1-last = Rosenberg

| editor1-first = Teya

| editor2-last = Hixon

| editor2-first = Martha P.

| editor3-last = Scapple

| editor3-first = Sharon M.

| title = Diana Wynne Jones: An Exciting and Exacting Wisdom

| location = New York

| publisher = Peter Lang

| year = 2002

| isbn = 0-8204-5687-X

}}

{{Wikiquote}}

• {{isfdb name|593}}
• [https://web.archive.org/web/20050619233203/http://www.leemac.freeserve.co.uk/ The Diana Wynne Jones fansite]—fan-operated but approved by Jones who also participated
• [http://sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/jones_diana_wynne "Diana Wynne Jones"], entry in The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction
• {{IMDb name|id=1168510}}
• [https://web.archive.org/web/20011225104225/http://scifan.com/writers/jj/JonesWDiana.asp Diana Wynne Jones] at SciFan
• {{IBList|type=author|id=1453|name=Diana Wynne Jones}}
• [https://www.bbc.co.uk/bristol/content/goingout/2003/03/05/books.shtml "Wrestling with an Angel" (2003)], based on an interview with BBC Bristol
• {{LCAuth|n2002056752|Ursula Jones|8|ue}}

{{World Fantasy Award Life Achievement}}

{{Diana Wynne Jones}}

{{Authority control}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Jones, Diana Wynne}}

Category:1934 births

Category:2011 deaths

Category:20th-century English short story writers

Category:20th-century English novelists

Category:20th-century English women writers

Category:Alumni of St Anne's College, Oxford

Category:English women short story writers

Category:British parodists

Category:Parody novelists

Category:British writers of young adult literature

Category:Deaths from lung cancer in England

Category:English atheists

Category:English children's writers

Category:English fantasy writers

Category:English women novelists

Category:English people of Welsh descent

Category:Guardian Children's Fiction Prize winners

Category:People educated at Friends School Saffron Walden

Category:People from Thaxted

Category:English women science fiction and fantasy writers

Category:British women writers of young adult literature

Category:World Fantasy Award–winning writers

Category:Muses (persons)