• R.I.P. Jill Paton Walsh, 83, UK mystery/SF novelist

    From Lenona@lenona321@yahoo.com to rec.arts.mystery on Mon Oct 19 15:34:00 2020
    From Newsgroup: rec.arts.mystery

    She had four entries in the Something About the Author series, including an autobiographical essay, plus an entry in vol. 128 of the Children's Literature Review series.
    From Wikipedia:
    "She may be known best for the Peter WimseyrCoHarriet Vane mysteries that have completed and continued the work of Dorothy Sayers."
    https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-54600916
    Novelist and children's author Jill Paton Walsh has died at the age of 83, her agent has confirmed.
    The London-born writer won numerous awards for her children's books, including The Whitbread Prize in 1974 for The Emperor's Winding Sheet.
    She self-published her third novel, Knowledge of Angels, after failing to find a UK publisher - it went on to be shortlisted for the 1994 Booker Prize.
    Paton Walsh received a CBE for services to literature in 1996.
    She was born Gillian Bliss in 1937 and was educated in north Finchley, London, before graduating from St Anne's College, Oxford.
    She went on to teach English at a grammar school in Enfield, north London, for three years between 1959 and 1962.
    In 1961 she married Anthony Paton Walsh and they had three children although the couple later split.
    Paton Walsh embarked on her career writing children's fiction, including some of her best known works, Fireweed, Unleaving, A Parcel of Patterns and Gaffer Samson's Luck, all published in the 70s and 80s.
    Her later adult novels included Lapsing (1986), The Serpentine Cave (1997) and A Desert in Bohemia (2000).
    Paton Walsh was also known for continuing the work of Dorothy L Sayers with her Lord Peter Wimsey and Harriet Vane stories.
    In an interview published on her website, she described herself as a "late starter" to writing, at the age of 26.
    "When I began to write, I was living at home with a baby, and missing the children I had been teaching," she explained.
    "I didn't feel very grown-up, and I realised I knew a lot about what my second formers had liked to read, and what they had not liked. I thought I might manage a story to please them."
    Paton Walsh also created several picture books for small children, including When I Was Little Like You, Connie Came to Play and When Grandma Came.
    (end)
    I'm amazed the BBC didn't mention her second husband, the children's literature scholar, novelist, and Edgar winner, John Rowe Townsend! They married in 2004 and he died in 2014.
    https://groups.google.com/g/rec.arts.books.childrens/c/7OAzkt7kUMA/m/cR0S95BoHgAJ
    (birthday post from 2017 - it includes her awards, details on her sci-fi novels, videos, & booklist)
    http://www.greenbay.co.uk/jpw.html
    (her home page)
    https://www.fantasticfiction.com/w/jill-paton-walsh/
    (book covers and photo) http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/8733.Jill_Paton_Walsh
    (reader reviews) https://www.google.com/?gws_rd=ssl#q=jill+paton+walsh+kirkus&spf=425
    (Kirkus reviews)
    Lenona.
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  • From Lenona@lenona321@yahoo.com to rec.arts.mystery on Tue Nov 24 17:35:03 2020
    From Newsgroup: rec.arts.mystery

    https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/18/books/jill-paton-walsh-dead.html
    (this appeared in the hard copy yesterday)
    By Neil Genzlinger
    Updated Nov. 19, 2020
    First paragraphs:
    Jill Paton Walsh was greeted with acclaim in the 1960s when she began writing young-adult books that challenged her readers in both plotting and messaging. There was rCLFireweedrCY (1970), a story of two British adolescents who set up housekeeping in a bombed-out building during World War II. There was rCLGoldengroverCY (1972), about two youths who navigate the transition from childhood to adulthood during an eventful summer.
    But in 1994 Ms. Paton Walsh achieved a whole different level of acclaim, by an unlikely route, with a book for adults, rCLKnowledge of Angels,rCY a genre-defying medieval fable about an atheist and a girl raised by wolves. Here she delved into themes of faith and reason and more.
    Yet despite her success with books for young readers, rCLKnowledge of AngelsrCY struggled to assert itself: No one in her native England would publish it.
    rCLBritish publishers wouldnrCOt even say what they didnrCOt like about it,rCY Ms. Paton Walsh told The Daily Mail of London that year, rCLso I couldnrCOt even change it to suit them.rCY
    And so, in a move that was rare for the time, she published it herself rCo and had the last laugh. The book was shortlisted for the Booker Prize, one of the top literary awards in the world, and is said to be the first self-published book to make that elite list.
    Peter Lewis of The Daily Mail had a crisp rebuke for all those publishers rCo 19 was the final count rCo who had said no to the book. rCLTo open it and start reading,rCY he wrote, rCLis to be appalled by their lack of judgment.rCY...
    (snip)
    Another excerpt:
    ...Her next young adult book, rCLGoldengrove,rCY was about two youngsters accustomed to spending summers at their grandmotherrCOs seaside home and how one particular summer changed everything. Writing in The Times Book Review, Barbara Wersba, herself an author of young adult books, praised Ms. Paton WalshrCOs ability to write rCLas though she were still 12 years old.rCY But, she wrote, that didnrCOt mean that Ms. Paton WalshrCOs books were juvenile.
    rCLI find it significant that rCyGoldengroverCO will be marketed for children between the ages of 11 and 14,rCY Ms. Wersba wrote, rCLand never reach their parents. The current division of fiction into Lots of Sex for the grown-ups and Less Sex for the kids is not only silly but wasteful, for the grown-ups are missing some beautiful and highly original work.rCY
    Ms. Paton Walsh aged the rCLGoldengroverCY characters in rCLUnleavingrCY (1976). In 1979, with rCLA Chance Child,rCY she gave readers a compelling look at child labor in the 19th century....
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