Janet Frame

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Frame, Janet (Paterson) (1924– ), New Zealand novelist, poet, and short story writer, born in Oamaru of Scottish parentage, educated at Otago University and Dunedin Teachers' Training College. Her childhood was overshadowed by the death (by drowning) of her two sisters. She was misdiagnosed as a schizophrenic and spent several harrowing years undergoing treatment, including electric shock therapy, experiences that coloured her writing.

Her first book, The Lagoon (1952, short stories), was followed by a novel, Owls Do Cry (1957, pub. UK 1961), in which circumstances of her own life are mirrored in those of the Withers family, who are also the subject of Faces in the Water (1961) and The Edge of the Alphabet (1962). On a grant from the New Zealand Literary Fund she travelled to Europe and spent several years living in England before returning to New Zealand after the death of her father. Subsequent novels, all of which display her gifts as a stylist, include The Adaptable Man (1965), A Stage of Siege (1966), The Rainbirds (1968), the futuristic Intensive Care (1970), Daughter Buffalo (1972), Living in the Maniototo (1979), and The Carpathians (1988). She has published three volumes of autobiography: To the Island (1982), An Angel at My Table (1984), and The Envoy from Mirror City (1985); these were the subject of the film, An Angel at My Table, by Jane Campion. Two further collections of short stories are The Reservoir and Other Stories (1966) and You Are Now Entering the Human Heart (1983). The Pocket Mirror (1967) is a volume of poems.

Janet Frame (Janet Paterson Frame Clutha) , 1924–2004, New Zealand novelist, b. Dunedin. Frame's complex, disturbing novels are marked by startling images and masterful language. Often drawn from her own years of institutionalization in psychiatric hospitals and her rescue from a scheduled lobotomy (after a misdiagnosis of schizophrenia), they depict disturbed and often visionary people living on the edge of madness or death. These themes are especially vivid in her first published work, a book of short stories entitled The Lagoon (1951), and her first two novels, Owls Do Cry (1957) and Faces in the Water (1961). Frame's other works include a volume of poems, The Pocket Mirror (1967); the short-story collection The Reservoir and Other Stories (1966); and a children's book. In all, Frame wrote a total of 12 novels, including The Rainbirds (1968), Intensive Care (1970), Daughter Buffalo (1972), Living in the Maniototo (1979), The Carpathians (1988), and a 1963 work, Towards Another Summer, which was not published until 2007.

Bibliography: See her autobiographical trilogy, To the Is-land (1982), An Angel at My Table (1984), and The Envoy from Mirror City (1985); M. King, Wrestling with the Angel: A Life of Janet Frame (2000) and An Inward Sun: The World of Janet Frame (2002); studies by P. Evans (1977), J. Delbaere, ed. (1992), J. D. Panny (1993, rev. ed. 2002), G. Mercer (1994), M. Delrez (2002), S. Oettli-van Delden (2003), and M. Wikse (2006); biographical film, An Angel at My Table (1990), dir. by J. Campion.

Frame, Janet (1924–2004) New Zealand short-story writer and novelist. Her works draw on first-hand experience of the treatment of mental health patients. Her autobiographical work, An Angel at My Table (1984), was filmed by Jane Campion.