Jane Gardam

Author profile

born

July 11, 1928 in Coatham, North Yorkshire, England, The United Kingdom

gender

female

genre

Literature & Fiction, Children's Books

About this author

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Jane Mary Gardam OBE is a British author of children's and adult fiction. She also reviews for the Spectator and the Telegraph, and writes for BBC radio. She lives in Kent, Wimbledon and Yorkshire. She has won numerous literary awards including the Whitbread Award, twice. She is mother of Tim Gardam, Principal of St Anne's College, Oxford. Jane has been awarded the Heywood Hill Literary Prize for a lifetime’s contribution to the enjoyment of literature and has been shortlisted for the Booker Prize.

Her first book for adults, Black Faces, White Faces (1975), a collection of linked short stories about Jamaica, won both the David Higham Prize for Fiction and the Winifred Holtby Memorial Prize. Subsequent collections of short stories include The...more Jane Mary Gardam OBE is a British author of children's and adult fiction. She also reviews for the Spectator and the Telegraph, and writes for BBC radio. She lives in Kent, Wimbledon and Yorkshire. She has won numerous literary awards including the Whitbread Award, twice. She is mother of Tim Gardam, Principal of St Anne's College, Oxford. Jane has been awarded the Heywood Hill Literary Prize for a lifetime’s contribution to the enjoyment of literature and has been shortlisted for the Booker Prize.

Her first book for adults, Black Faces, White Faces (1975), a collection of linked short stories about Jamaica, won both the David Higham Prize for Fiction and the Winifred Holtby Memorial Prize. Subsequent collections of short stories include The Pangs of Love and Other Stories (1983), winner of the Katherine Mansfield Award; Going into a Dark House (1994), which was awarded the PEN/Macmillan Silver Pen Award (1995); and Missing the Midnight: Hauntings & Grotesques (1997).

Jane Gardam's first novel for adults, God on the Rocks (1978), a coming-of-age novel set in the 1930s, was adapted for television in 1992. It won the Prix Baudelaire (France) in 1989 and was shortlisted for the Booker Prize for Fiction. Her other novels include The Queen of the Tambourine (1991), a haunting tale about a woman's fascination with a mysterious stranger, which won the Whitbread Novel Award; Faith Fox (1996), a portrait of England in the 1990s; and The Flight of the Maidens (2000), set just after the Second World War, which narrates the story of three Yorkshire schoolgirls on the brink of university and adult life. This book was adapted for BBC Radio 4's Woman's Hour. In 1999 Jane Gardam was awarded the Heywood Hill Literary Prize in recognition of a distinguished literary career.

Her non-fiction includes a book about the Yorkshire of her childhood in The Iron Coast (1994), published with photographs by Peter Burton and Harland Walshaw.

She also writes for children and young adults. Her novel Bilgewater (1977), originally written for children, has now been re-classified as adult fiction. She was awarded the Whitbread Children's Book Award for The Hollow Land (1981) and is the author of A Few Fair Days (1971), a collection of short stories for children set on a Cumberland farm, and two novels for teenagers, A Long Way From Verona (1971), which explores a wartime childhood in Yorkshire, and The Summer After the Funeral (1973), a story about a loss of innocence after the death of a father.

Jane Gardam is a member of PEN and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. She is married with three children and divides her time between East Kent and Yorkshire. (less)

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Books by Jane Gardam

Average rating: 3.78 · 4,316 ratings · 1,160 reviews · 38 distinct works

	Old Filth 3.92 avg rating — 2,033 ratings — published 2004 — 6 editions	My rating:
	The Man in the Wooden Hat 3.92 avg rating — 733 ratings — published 2009 — 7 editions	My rating:
	The Queen Of The Tambourine 3.37 avg rating — 339 ratings — published 1991 — 10 editions	My rating:
	God on the Rocks 3.51 avg rating — 290 ratings — published 1978 — 7 editions	My rating:
	The Flight of the Maidens 3.32 avg rating — 187 ratings — published 2000 — 6 editions	My rating:
	Bilgewater 3.96 avg rating — 112 ratings — 7 editions	My rating:
	The People on Privilege Hill 3.69 avg rating — 157 ratings — published 2007 — 6 editions	My rating:
	Faith Fox: A Novel 3.24 avg rating — 125 ratings — published 1996 — 7 editions	My rating:
	A Long Way from Verona 3.90 avg rating — 82 ratings — published 1971 — 5 editions	My rating:
	Crusoe's Daughter 3.61 avg rating — 51 ratings — published 2012 — 4 editions	My rating:

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Quotes by Jane Gardam

“The astounding thing about Paula is that she looks like Tess of the D´Urbervilles, and she sounds like Tess of the D´Urbervilles, and she thinks like Tess of the D´Urbervilles and yet she is so different from Tess of the D´Urbervilles. I expect she comes from a different part of Dorset.”
― Jane Gardam, Bilgewater

4 people liked it

“What I don't want is to be called an octogenarian. I saw 'Octogenarian Jane Gardam' and I thought 'Blow me!' I mean, I am, but that's not the point."

(Inteview, The Guardian, 8 January 2011)”
― Jane Gardam

3 people liked it

“But there's time yet. The old women of the tribe have almost always been the wiser. If they keep their marbles long enough. Old men forget--or tend to reminisce, and reminisce falsely and sententiously as a rule. We are often very silly in our middle years but we tend to improve”
― Jane Gardam, The Queen Of The Tambourine

2 people liked it

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