She did all this informed by a keen understanding of human nature and a clear sense of how stories are constructed.ĭiana and her younger sister Isobel, 1937 (Diana Wynne Jones, Reflections on the Magic of Writing) She wrote mainly for children, but also for adults she wrote stories set in our contemporary world, and stories set in fantasy worlds she wrote her own versions of Arthurian tales, and even wrote about schools for witches and wizards before they took the world by storm. Many writers who produce in anything like the sort of volume she did manage it by sticking to a winning formula, but Jones continued to experiment throughout her life.
Writing in the Guardian, Christopher Priest described her fantasies as ‘of seminal importance for their bridging of the gap between “traditional” children’s fantasy, as written by CS Lewis or E Nesbit, and the more politically and socially aware children’s literature of the modern period.’ The Telegraph noted that ‘ 40 or so books maintained a remarkably high standard in both inventiveness and the elegance of their prose.’ Charlie Butler, writing for the Independent, goes so far as to say ‘that Jones never won either the Carnegie Medal or Whitbread/Costa Award is both a mystery and, in retrospect, a scandal.’ĭiana Wynne Jones’s work combines a wonderful originality in concept with well-considered execution, regardless of her chosen subject matter. When she passed away, a flurry of obituaries celebrating her life and work appeared in the nation’s newspapers. She would have written more had cancer not caught up to her: at the time of her death in 2011, she was in the middle of writing a novel and already planning another.ĭianna Wynne Jones, photographed in ‘The Times’ Born in 1934, she published more than 40 children’s fantasy books over the course of her career. Diana Wynne Jones was one of the most exceptionally prolific, beloved, and influential British children’s writers of the twentieth century.
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