Janet Frame

Janet Paterson Frame, ONZ, CBE (28 August 1924 – 29 January 2004) was a New Zealand author. She wrote eleven novels, four collections of short stories, a book of poetry, an edition of juvenile fiction, and three volumes of autobiography during her lifetime. Since her death, a twelfth novel, a second volume of poetry, and a handful of short stories have been released. Frame's celebrity is informed by her dramatic personal history as well as her literary career. Following years of psychiatric hospitalisation, Frame was scheduled for a lobotomy that was canceled when, just days before the procedure, her debut publication of short stories was unexpectedly awarded a national literary prize. These dramatic personal experiences feature prominently in Frame's autobiographical trilogy and director Jane Campion's popular film adaptation of the texts, with recognisably autobiographical elements further resurfacing in many of her fictional publications. Characterised by scholar Simone Oettli as a writer who simultaneously sought fame and anonymity, Frame eschewed the dominant New Zealand literary realism of the post-war era, combining prose, poetry, and modernist elements with a magical realist style, garnering numerous local literary prizes despite mixed critical and public reception.

1924–1956: Early Years


Janet Frame was born in Dunedin in the south-east of New Zealand's South Island as the third of five children of Scottish New Zealander parents. She grew up in a working class family. Her father, George Frame, worked for the New Zealand railways, and her mother Lottie (née Godfrey), served as a housemaid to the family of writer Katherine Mansfield. New Zealand's first female medical graduate, Dr Emily Hancock Siedeberg, delivered Frame at St. Helen's Hospital in 1924.

Frame spent her early childhood years in various small towns in New Zealand's South Island provinces of Otago and Southland, including Outram and Wyndham, before the family eventually settled in the coastal town of Oamaru (recognisable as the "Waimaru" of her début novel and subsequent fiction ). As recounted in the first volume of her autobiographies, Frame's childhood was marred by the deaths of two of her adolescent sisters, Myrtle and Isabel, who drowned in separate incidents, and the epileptic seizures suffered by her brother George (referred to as "Geordie" and "Bruddie").

In 1943, Frame began training as a teacher at the Dunedin College of Education, auditing courses in English, French and psychology at the adjacent University of Otago. After completing two years of theoretical studies with mixed results, Frame started a year of practical placement at the Arthur Street School in Dunedin, which, according to her biographer, initially went quite well. Things started to unravel later that year when she attempted suicide by ingesting a packet of aspirin. As a result of her suicide attempt, Frame began regular therapy sessions with junior lecturer John Money, to whom she developed a strong attraction, and whose later work as a sexologist specialising in gender reassignment controversial.



In September 1945, Frame abandoned her teacher-training classroom at Dunedin's Arthur Street School during a visit from an inspector. She was then briefly admitted to the psychiatric ward of the local Dunedin hospital for observation. Frame was unwilling to return home to her family, where tensions between her father and brother frequently manifested in outbursts of anger and violence. As a result, Frame was transferred from the local hospital's psychiatric ward to Seacliff Lunatic Asylum, a fabled and feared mental institution located 20 miles north of Dunedin. During the next eight years, Frame was repeatedly readmitted, usually voluntarily, to psychiatric hospitals in New Zealand. In addition to Seacliff Lunatic Asylum, these included Avondale, in Auckland, and Sunnyside in Christchurch. During this period, Frame was first diagnosed as suffering from schizophrenia, which was treated with electroconvulsive therapy and insulin.<ref name=FrameAutobio/

In 1951, while Frame was still a patient at Seacliff Lunatic Asylum, New Zealand's Caxton Press published her first book, a collection of shorts titled The Lagoon and Other Stories. The volume was awarded the Hubert Church Memorial Award, at that time one of New Zealand's most prestigious literary prizes. This resulted in the cancellation of Frame's scheduled lobotomy. Four years later, after her final discharge from Seacliff Lunatic Asylum, Frame met writer Frank Sargeson. She lived and worked at his home in the Auckland suburb of Takapuna from April 1955 to July 1956, producing her first full-length novel, Owls Do Cry (Pegasus, 1957).



1957-1989: Literary Career
Frame left New Zealand in late 1956, and the next seven years were most prolific in terms of publication. She lived and worked in Europe, primarily based in London, with brief sojourns to Ibiza and Andorra. However, Frame was still struggling with anxiety and depression. She admitted herself to the Maudsley in London. American-trained psychiatrist Alan Miller, who studied under John Money at Johns Hopkins University, proposed that she had never suffered from schizophrenia. In an effort to alleviate the ill effects of her years spent in and out of psychiatric hospitals, Frame then began regular therapy sessions with psychoanalyst Robert Hugh Cawley, who encouraged her to pursue her writing. Frame would eventually dedicate seven of her novels to Cawley.

Frame returned to New Zealand in 1963. She accepted the Burns Fellowship at the University of Otago in 1965. She later lived in several parts of New Zealand's North Island, including Auckland, Taranaki, Wanganui, the Horowhenua, Palmerston North, Waiheke, Stratford, Browns Bay and Levin.

During this period Frame traveled extensively, occasionally to Europe, but principally to the United States, where she accepted residencies at the MacDowell and Yaddo artists' colonies. Partly as a result of these extended stays in the U.S., Frame developed close relationships with several Americans. These included the painter Theophilus Brown (whom she later referred to as "the chief experience of my life" ) and his long-time partner Paul John Wonner, the poet May Sarton, John Marquand, Jr. and Alan Lelchuck. Frame's one-time university tutor/counselor and longtime friend John Money worked in North America from 1947 onwards, and Frame frequently based herself at his home in Baltimore.

In the 1980s Frame authored three volumes of autobiography (To the Is-land, An Angel at my Table and The Envoy from Mirror City) which collectively traced the course of her life to her return to New Zealand in 1963. Director Jane Campion and screenwriter Laura Jones adapted the trilogy for television broadcast. It was eventually released as an award-winning feature film, An Angel at My Table. Actresses, Kerry Fox, Alexia Keogh and Karen Fergusson portrayed the author at various ages. Frame's autobiographies sold better than any of her previous publications, and Campion's successful film adaptation of the texts, introduced a new generation of readers to her work. These successes increasingly pushed Frame into the public eye.

Frame intended the autobiographies to "set the record straight" regarding her past and in particular her mental status. However, critical and public speculation has continued to focus on her mental health. In 2007, after Frame's death, The New Zealand Medical Journal published an article by a medical specialist who proposed that Frame may have registered on what is referred to as the autistic spectrum, a suggestion that was disputed by the author's literary executor.

1990-2000: Literary Adaptations & Cultural Celebrity
During her lifetime, Frame's work was principally published by American firm George Braziller, garnering numerous literary prizes in her native New Zealand, and the Commonwealth Writers' Prize in 1989 for her final novel, The Carpathians. In 1983 Frame became a Commander of the Order of British Empire (CBE) for services to literature. In 1990, she was made a member of the Order of New Zealand, the country's highest civil honour. Frame also held foreign membership of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, received honorary doctorates from two New Zealand universities, and achieved recognition as a cultural icon in her native country. Rumours occasionally circulated portraying Frame as a contender for the Nobel Prize in literature, most notably in 1998, after a journalist spotted her name at the top of a list later revealed to have been in alphabetical order, and again five years later, in 2003, when Åsa Beckman, the influential chief literary critic at the Swedish daily Dagens Nyheter, wrongly predicted that Frame would win the prestigious prize.

Frame's writing became the focus of academic criticism from the late 1970s, with approaches ranging from Marxist and social realist, to feminist and poststructuralist. In later years, book-length monographs on Frame were published. These included Patrick Evans’s bio-critical contribution for the "Twayne's World Authors Series," Janet Frame (1977), Gina Mercer's feminist reading of the novels and autobiographies, Janet Frame: Subversive Fictions (1994), and Judith Dell Panny's allegorical approach to the works, I have what I gave: The fiction of Janet Frame (1992). A collection of essays edited by Jeanne Delbaere was first published in 1978, with a revised edition released under the title The Ring of Fire: Essays on Janet Frame in 1992. That same year, Dunedin's University of Otago hosted a conference dedicated to a discussion of Frame's work. Many of the papers were published in a special issue of The Journal of New Zealand Literature.



In 2000, the popular New Zealand historian Michael King published his authorised biography of Frame, Wrestling with the Angel. The book was simultaneously released in New Zealand and North America, with British and Australian editions appearing in later years. King's award-winning and exhaustive work attracted both praise and criticism. Some questioned the extent to which Frame guided the hand of her biographer,  while others argued that he had failed to come to terms with the complexity and subtlety of his subject. Adding to the controversy, King openly admitted that he withheld information "that would have been a source of embarrassment and distress to her," and that he adopted publisher Christine Cole Catley's notion of "compassionate truth." This advocates "a presentation of evidence and conclusions that fulfil [sic] the major objectives of biography, but without the revelation of information that would involve the living subject in unwarranted embarrassment, loss of face, emotional or physical pain, or a nervous or psychiatric collapse." King defended his project and maintained that future biographies on Frame would eventually fill in the gaps left by his own work.

2004 – present: Death & Posthumous Publications
Janet Frame died in Dunedin in January 2004, aged 79, from acute myeloid leukaemia, shortly after becoming one of the first recipients of the New Zealand "Icon" award. A handful of posthumous works have been released since her death, including a volume of poetry entitled The Goose Bath, which was awarded New Zealand's top poetry prize in 2007. This generated a minor controversy "among the nation's literarchy" who felt the posthumous prize "set an awkward precedent". A novella, Towards Another Summer, was also published posthumously, a work inspired by a weekend Frame spent with British journalist Geoffrey Moorhouse and his family. In 2008, two previously unpublished short stories set in mental hospitals appeared in The New Yorker. Another previously unpublished short story was carried in The New Yorker in 2010. Also in 2010, Gifted, a novel by New Zealand academic (and former Frame biographer) Patrick Evans, was published and subsequently shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writers' Prize. The story is a fictionalised account of the relationship between Janet Frame and Frank Sargeson during her time living as a guest on his Takapuna property in 1955-56. In March 2011, the New Zealand branch of Penguin Books acquired the rights to publish three new editions of Frame's work. The new editions are reported to include a collection of non-fiction essays and interviews, a second collection of uncollected short stories, and a previously unpublished novella authored by Frame during her brief stay in Ibiza in November 1956.

Recognition

 * 1951: Hubert Church Prose Award (The Lagoon and other Stories)
 * 1956: New Zealand Literary Fund Grant
 * 1958: New Zealand Literary Fund Award for Achievement (Owls Do Cry)
 * 1964: Hubert Church Prose Award (Scented Gardens for the Blind); New Zealand Literary Fund Scholarship in Letters.
 * 1965: Robert Burns Fellowship, University of Otago, Dunedin, NZ
 * 1967: "Buckland Literary Award." (The Reservoir and Other Stories/A State of Siege)
 * 1969: New Zealand Literary Fund Award (The Pocket Mirror: Poems)
 * 1971: Buckland Literary Award (Intensive Care); Hubert Church Prose Award." (Intensive Care)
 * 1972: President of Honour: P.E.N. International New Zealand Centre, Wellington, NZ
 * 1973: James Wattie Book of the Year Award (Daughter Buffallo)
 * 1974: Hubert Church Prose Award (Daughter Buffallo); Winn-Manson Menton Fellowship.
 * 1978: Honorary Doctor of Literature (D.Litt. Honoris Causa) University of Otago, Dunedin, NZ
 * 1979: Buckland Literary Award (Living in the Maniototo)
 * 1980: New Zealand Book Award for Fiction (Living in the Maniototo)
 * 1983: Buckland Literary Award; Sir James Wattie Book of the Year Award (To the Is-Land); C.B.E. (Commander, Order of the British Empire)
 * 1984: Frank Sargeson Fellowship, University of Auckland, NZ
 * 1984: New Zealand Book Award for Non-Fiction (An Angel at My Table); Sir James Wattie Book of the Year Award (An Angel at My Table); Turnovsky Prize for Outstanding Achievement in the Arts
 * 1985: Sir James Wattie Book of the Year Award (The Envoy from Mirror City)
 * 1986: New Zealand Book Award for Non-Fiction (The Envoy from Mirror City); Honorary Foreign Member: The American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters
 * 1989: Ansett New Zealand Book Award for Fiction; Commonwealth Writers Prize for Best Book (The Carpathians)
 * 1990: O.N.Z. (Member, Order of New Zealand)
 * 1992: Honorary Doctor of Literature (D.Litt), University of Waikato, Hamilton, NZ
 * 1994: Massey University Medal, Massey University, Palmerston North, NZ
 * 2003: Arts Foundation of New Zealand Icon Artists; New Zealand Prime Minister’s Award for Literary Achievement
 * 2007: Montana Book Award for Poetry (The Goose Bath)

Novels

 * 1957 Owls Do Cry. Christchurch: Pegasus Press.
 * 1961 Faces in the Water. Christchurch: Pegasus Press; New York: Braziller.
 * 1962 The Edge of the Alphabet. Christchurch: Pegasus Press.
 * 1963 Scented Gardens for the Blind. London: WH Allen.
 * 1965 The Adaptable Man. London: WH Allen.
 * 1966 A State of Siege. New York: Braziller.
 * 1968 The Rainbirds. London: WH Allen. (Published in the US with Frame's preferred original title, Yellow Flowers in the Antipodean Room. New York: Braziller, 1969)
 * 1970 Intensive Care. New York: Braziller.
 * 1972 Daughter Buffalo. New York: Braziller.
 * 1979 Living in the Maniototo. New York: Braziller.
 * 1989 The Carpathians. New York: Braziller.
 * 2007 Towards Another Summer. Auckland: Vintage ISBN 9781869418687 (Posthumously published).

Short stories

 * 1951 The Lagoon and Other Stories. Christchurch: Caxton Press. (Mistakenly dated on first edition as 1952)
 * 1963. The Reservoir: Stories and Sketches/Snowman Snowman: Fables and Fantasies. New York: Braziller (Edited selection published in the Commonwealth edition The Reservoir and Other Stories London: W.H. Allen, 1966).
 * 1983. You Are Now Entering the Human Heart. Wellington: Victoria University Press.

Children's fiction

 * 1969. Mona Minim and the Smell of the Sun. (With illustrations by Robin Jacques.) New York: Braziller (Reissued posthumously in 2005 by Random House, New Zealand, with illustrations by David Elliot).

Poetry

 * 1967. The Pocket Mirror. New York: Braziller.
 * 2006. The Goose Bath. Auckland: Random House/Vintage (Posthumously published); (Released in the UK as a collected edition along with selections from The Pocket Mirror under the title Storms Will Tell: Selected Poems. Bloodaxe Books, 2008)

Autobiography

 * 1982. To the Is-Land (Autobiography 1). New York: Braziller.
 * 1984. An Angel at My Table (Autobiography 2). New York: Braziller.
 * 1984. The Envoy From Mirror City (Autobiography 3). Auckland: Century Hutchinson.
 * 1989. An Autobiography (Collected edition). Auckland: Century Hutchinson (Posthumously reprinted under the title An Angel at My Table, London: Virago, 2008).

Separately published stories and poems

 * 1946. "University Entrance" in New Zealand Listener, 22 March 1946.
 * 1947. "Alison Hendry" in Landfall 2, June 1947. (Published under the penname "Jan Godfrey"; reprinted in The Lagoon and Other Stories under the title "Jan Godfrey".)
 * 1954. "The Waitress" in New Zealand Listener, 9 July 1954
 * 1954. "The Liftman" in New Zealand Listener, 13 August 1954
 * 1954. "On Paying the Third Installment" in New Zealand Listener, 10 September 1954
 * 1954. "Lolly Legs" in New Zealand Listener, 15 October 1954
 * 1954. "Trio Concert" in New Zealand Listener, 29 October 1954.
 * 1954. "Timothy" in New Zealand Listener, 26 November 1954
 * 1955. "The Transformation" in New Zealand Listener, 28 January 1955
 * 1956. "The Ferry" in New Zealand Listener, 13 July 1956.
 * 1956. "Waiting for Daylight" in Landfall (NZ) 10
 * 1956. "I Got Shoes" in New Zealand Listener, 2 November 1956.
 * 1957. "Face Downwards in the Grass" in Mate (NZ) 1
 * 1957. "The Dead" in Landfall (NZ) 11
 * 1957. "The Wind Brother" in School Journal (NZ) 51.1
 * 1958. "The Friday Night World" in School Journal (NZ) 52.1
 * 1962. "Prizes" in The New Yorker 10 March 1962
 * 1962. "The Red-Currant Bush, the Black-Currant Bush, the Gooseberry Bush, the African Thorn Hedge, and the Garden Gate Who Was Once the Head of an Iron Bed" in Mademoiselle April 1962
 * 1963. "The Reservoir" in The New Yorker 12 January 1963 (reprinted in The Reservoir: Stories and Sketches)
 * 1963. "The Chosen Image" in Vogue, July 1963
 * 1964. "The Joiner" in Landfall (NZ) 18
 * 1957. "The Road to Takapuna" in Mate (NZ) 12
 * 1964. "Scott's Horse" in Landfall (NZ) 18
 * 1964. "The Senator Had Plans" in Landfall (NZ) 18
 * 1965. "The Bath" in Landfall (NZ) 19 (Reprinted in You Are Now Entering the Human Heart)
 * 1966. "A Boy's Will" in Landfall (NZ) 20
 * 1966. "White Turnips: A Timely Monologue" in New Zealand Monthly Review May 1966
 * 1966. "In Alco Hall" in Harper's Bazaar, November 1966
 * 1968. "In Mexico City" in New Zealand Listener, 20 December 1968
 * 1969. "You Are Now Entering the Human Heart" in The New Yorker 29 March 1969 (Reprinted in You Are Now Entering the Human Heart)
 * 1969. "The Birds of the Air" in Harper's Bazaar, June 1969
 * 1969. "Jet Flight" in New Zealand Listener, 8 August 1969
 * 1969. "The Words" in Mademoiselle October 1969
 * 1970. "Winter Garden" in The New Yorker 31 January 1970
 * 1974. "They Never Looked Back" in New Zealand Listener, 23 March 1974
 * 1975. "The Painter" in New Zealand Listener, 6 September 1975
 * 1976. "Rain on the Roof" in The Journal (NZ), April 1976 (Previously published in The Pocket Mirror)
 * 1979. "Insulation" in New Zealand Listener, 17 March 1979
 * 1979. "Two Widowers" in New Zealand Listener, 9 June 1979
 * 2004. "Three Poems by Janet Frame" in New Zealand Listener, 28 August-3 September 2004 (Posthumously published) view online
 * 2008. "A Night at the Opera" in The New Yorker, 2 June 2008 (Posthumously published) view online
 * 2008. "Gorse Is Not People" in The New Yorker, 1 September 2008 (Posthumously published) view online

Articles, reviews, essays and letters

 * 1953. "A Letter to Frank Sargeson" in Landfall 25, March 1953
 * 1954. "Review of Terence Journet's Take My Tip" in Landfall 32, December 1954
 * 1955. "Review of A Fable by William Faulkner" in Parson's Packet, no. 36, October–December 1955
 * 1964. "Memory and a Pocketful of Words" in Times Literary Supplement, 4 June 1964
 * 1964. "This Desirable Property" in New Zealand Listener, 3 July 1964
 * 1965. "Beginnings" in Landfall (NZ) 73, March 1965
 * 1968. "The Burns Fellowship" in Landfall (NZ) 87, September 1968
 * 1973. "Charles Brasch 1909-1973: Tributes and Memories from His Friends" in Islands (NZ) 5, Spring 1973
 * 1975. "Janet Frame on Tales from Grimm" in Education (NZ) 24.9, 1975
 * 1982. "Departures and Returns" in G. Amirthanayagan (ed.) Writers in East-West Encounter, London: Macmillan, 1982 (Originally delivered as a paper at the International Colloquium on the Cross-Cultural Encounter in Literature, East-West Center, Honolulu, October 1977).
 * 1984. "A last Letter to Frank Sargeson" in Islands (NZ) 33, July