In memory of Janet Frame
poet, novelist, memoirist
born August 28, 1924
died January29, 2004

Janet Frame was born 28 August 1924, in Dunedin, New Zealand, and died on January 29, 2004. She spent four and a half years out of eight years in mental hospitals. Although she was given a diagnosis of schizophrenia, it was later rejected by doctors in London. Her mother had given doctors approval to do a lobotomy, but this was cancelled after her first book - The Lagoon and Other Stories - won a prestigious national award.

The story of the torment and brutalising treatment she experienced during her stays in psychciatric wards, including hundreds of electric shock treatments, is well known. Her novel Faces in The Water is a fictional account of some of those experiences.

In her lifetime, she published eleven novels, five collections of stories, a volume of poetry and a children's book. The Jane Campion film An Angel at my Table is an adaption of Frame's much celebrated autobiographical trilogy, written just before she turned sixty.

To read Penny Richard's post about Janet Frame at Disability Studies, Temple University, go here.
The Janet Frame Estate Home Page is here.