Jennifer Dawson

Dawson was born in London, the daughter of a journalist mother and a travel agent father. She attended the Mary Datchelor School in Camberwell and went on to read Modern History at St Anne's College, Oxford.{{Cite web |title=Jennifer Dawson |url=https://www.oxfordreference.com/display/10.1093/oi/authority.20110803095703435?d=%2F10.1093%2Foi%2Fauthority.20110803095703435&p=emailAGbNf89gG8aMQ |access-date=2024-02-04 |website=Oxford Reference |language=en |doi=}} During her time at Oxford she studied with Iris Murdoch.{{Cite web |title=Jennifer Dawson |url=https://orlando.cambridge.org/profiles/dawsje#paragraph--basic--default--42216 |access-date=2024-02-04 |website=Orlando: Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present}} Also at Oxford, she suffered a breakdown and spent several months in Warneford Hospital, Oxford.{{Cite news |date=2000-10-26 |title=Jennifer Dawson |url=https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-guardian-jennifer-dawson/140260179/ |access-date=2024-02-04 |work=The Guardian |pages=24 |via=Newspapers.com}}

Following the completion of her studies, Dawson worked as a teacher at a convent in Laval in France, and later at Oxford University Press where she made editorial contributions to a number of reference works. In addition to these roles, she also worked as social worker in a psychiatric hospital in Worcester and it was her experiences here, and as a patient of such an institution, that formed the basis for her debut novel The Ha-Ha (1961). The novel, which explores schizophrenia, received considerable critical acclaim, and was awarded the James Tait Black Memorial Prize. It was adapted for the London stage by Richard Eyre,{{Cite news |last=Wardle |first=Irving |date=15 June 1968 |title=' The Ha-Ha,' Dramatized Study Of a Sick Girl, Opens in London |url=http://timesmachine.nytimes.comhttp//timesmachine.content-tagging.us-east-1-01.prd.dvsp.nyt.net/timesmachine/1968/06/15/88953789.html |access-date=2024-02-04 |work=The New York Times |pages=38 |language=en}} and was later broadcast by the BBC on both radio and television.{{Cite web |last=Fowler |first=Christopher |date=2013-05-25 |title=Invisible Ink: No 174 - Jennifer Dawson |url=https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/features/invisible-ink-no-174-jennifer-dawson-8632161.html |access-date=2024-02-04 |website=The Independent |language=en}}

Dawson continued to explore similar themes throughout the 1960s and 1970s via novels such as The Cold Country, Strawberry Boy and A Field of Scarlet Poppies. In the 1980s two further novels The Upstairs People and Judasland were released by the Virago Press. "Jennifer Dawson's prose is as jagged and angular as her tone on behalf of the marginalised—women, immigrants, the poor, the sick—is resenting and bitter," wrote Valentine Cunningham when reviewing Judasland in The Observer in 1989.{{Cite news |last=Cunningham |first=Valentine |date=1989-05-07 |title=Betrayed by a Kiss |url=https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-observer-betrayed-by-a-kissvalentin/140263949/ |access-date=2024-02-04 |work=The Observer |pages=44 |via=Newspapers.com}}

She worked on the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, and participated in the 1963 Aldermaston March.

• James Tait Black Memorial Prize (1961)
• Cheltenham Festival Award (1962)

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• The Ha-Ha (1961)
• Fowler's Snare (1963)
• The Cold Country (1965)
• The Queen of Trent (1972)
• Strawberry Boy (1976)
• Hospital Wedding (1978).
• A Field of Scarlet Poppies (1979)
• The Upstairs People (1988)
• Judasland (1989)

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Dawson married philosopher Michael Hinton in 1964. He died in February 2000, and she died in October 2000, at the age of 71, in a hospice in Charlbury.

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Category:1929 births

Category:2000 deaths

Category:English women novelists

Category:Alumni of St Anne's College, Oxford

Category:James Tait Black Memorial Prize recipients

Category:20th-century English women writers

Category:20th-century English novelists