janet frame an angel at my table the complete autobiography

Janet Frame accomplishes 'the transformation of ordinary facts and ideas into a shining palace of mirrors'.Īll three volumes of this autobiography - To The Is-Land (1983), An Angel At My Table (1984) and The Envoy From The Mirror City (1985) have won major literary prizes. This is not just the records of a life but also the flourishing of a writer's career. From a childhood and adolescence spent in a materially poor but intellectually intense railway family, through life as a student and years of incarceration in mental hospitals (essentially for wanting to pursue a career as a poet), followed eventually by her entry into the saving world of writers and the 'Mirror City' that sustains them. Gathered here in a single edition are the three parts of Janet Frame's autobiography.

Janet Frame brings the skill of an extraordinary novelist and poet to these vivid and haunting recollections.

This book contains selections from the long out–of–print collection entitled Janet Frame: An Autobiography (George Brazillier, 1991), which itself was originally published in three volumes: To the Is–land, An Angel at My Table, and The Envoy from Mirror City.With a heartfelt introduction from Jane Campion. From a childhood and adolescence spent in a poor but intellectually intense railway family, through life as a student, and years of incarceration in mental hospitals, eventually followed by her entry into the saving world of writers and the 'Mirror City' that sustains them, we are given not only a record of the events of a life, but also 'the transformation of ordinary facts and ideas into a shining palace of mirrors.'įrame's journey of self–discovery, from New Zealand to London, to Paris and Barcelona, and then home again, is a heartfelt and courageous account of a writer's beginnings as well as one woman's personal struggle to survive. New Zealand's preeminent writer Janet Frame brings the skill of an extraordinary novelist and poet to these vivid and haunting recollections, gathered here for the first time in a single volume.

Synopsis: The autobiography of New Zealand's most significant writer

Janet frame an angel at my table the complete autobiography