#Scapple knife series

However, Karen Sands-O’Connor’s perceptive analysis, ‘Nowhere To Go, No One To Be: Diana Wynne and the Concepts of Englishness and Self-Image’, places Jones’s work as marking a point where the nature of children’s fiction shifts from a wholehearted defence of traditional values (Sands-O’Connor here cites Lively and Philippa Pearce as defenders) and towards, in some cases at least, and Jones among them, a recognition that nostalgia can be a source of power, but not necessarily to the good. No Golden Age is without its critics, and a number of ‘pop’ commentators too easily dismiss these writers and their contemporaries as dealing in misguided nostalgia, irrelevant to the modern world. At other times, I wished they had chosen fewer papers and covered topics in greater depth, although I could appreciate the need to give a reasonably broad view of Jones’s oeuvre.ĭiana Wynne Jones belongs to that generation of British writers of children’s fiction, Alan Garner, Susan Cooper, Penelope Lively among them, for whom the Second World War was an experience in common, a catalyst for introducing elements of the fantastic into otherwise realist writing, the so-called Golden Age of children’s literature. Inevitably, given the constraints of publication, they could do little more than scratch the surface of so broad an area of interest, in which case, at least one of their article choices puzzled me somewhat. However, in attempting to rectify this academic omission, it’s clear, immediately, that the editors had their work cut out, trying to steer a sensible course through the potential wealth of subjects generated by a body of work which extends to more than twenty novels, as well as several volumes of short stories, and a work of non-fiction.

#Scapple knife series

What there is has been conveniently listed by the editors of Diana Wynne Jones: An Exciting and Exacting Wisdom, the first volume in a new series from Peter Lang, Studies in Children’s Literature, a volume which goes some way towards redressing this scholarly imbalance. Similarly, although there have been many thoughtful reviews of her novels in various magazines, and a number of articles on her work, by Jones herself and by others, many of the latter now usefully available through two websites, The Official Diana Wynne Jones Website and Chrestomanci’s Castle, up until now there seems, somewhat surprisingly, to have been little in the way of published scholarly discussion of Jones’s work. The Rowling-fuelled explosion of interest in children’s fiction has changed this situation, with many of her older titles at last back in print alongside more recent novels. However, a more general public awareness of her work has been noticeably absent, for reasons that are not at all clear to me, except perhaps that her novels have had a somewhat chequered history in paperback publication. Her work is adored by her admirers, adult and child alike, and she has many fans, all over the world. WhiteĪs a writer, Diana Wynne Jones has existed in a peculiar state for many years. Published in Science Fiction Studies in 2002ĭiana Wynne Jones: An Exciting and Exacting Wisdom – ed.