R.I.P. Diana Wynne Jones 1934-2011

Diana Wynne Jones, who died on March 26 aged 76, was a writer whose children’s fantasies won her a small but devoted following; in recent years, following the success of JK Rowling’s Harry Potter books, she finally gained more popular success.

Diana Wynne Jones was born on August 16 1934 in north London, the eldest of three daughters of progressive schoolteachers who were neglectful and emotionally distant. On the outbreak of war the family was evacuated to the Lake District where they shared, with several other families, the large house which had once been home to the Altounyan children, upon whom Arthur Ransome based his Swallows and amazons stories. Ransome himself (“a small, tubby man with a lot of beard”) came round to complain about the noise the children were making; Beatrix Potter was more direct, smacking Diana’s younger sister for swinging on a gate.

Despite this unpromising introduction to literary figures — “up until then I’d thought that books were produced by machines at Woolworth’s” — Diana had, by the age of eight, determined to become a writer.

Her 40 or so books maintained a remarkably high standard in both inventiveness and the elegance of their prose. Among the most notable were Archer’s Goon (1984), adapted as a BBC television series in 1992; The Time of the Ghost (1981); Fire and Hemlock (1985); The Dalemark Quartet (1979-93); and Howl’s Moving Castle (1986) and its sequels, Castle in the Air (1990) and House of Many Ways (2008). The first of that series was filmed by the Japanese animator Hayao Miyazaki in 2004.

Diana Wynne Jones was cheerful, energetic and accident-prone, and often admitted to laughing out loud as she wrote. After the success of Harry Potter, much of her backlist was reissued by HarperCollins in paperbacks; there was also a conference devoted to her work in 2009. She received numerous awards, including a World Fantasy lifetime achievement award and, in 2006, an honorary DLitt from Bristol University.
Diana Wynne Jones is survived by her husband and three sons.

Jones was diagnosed with lung cancer in the early summer of 2009. She underwent surgery in July and reported to friends that the procedure had been successful. However in June 2010 she announced that she would be discontinuing chemotherapy, "which is serving only to make her feel very ill indeed." She stated at one point that she had regained her sense of taste and smell. Mid-2010, she was halfway through a new book, with plans for another to follow. She died on 26 March 2011 from the disease.

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