Jill Paton Walsh

Jill Paton Walsh, CBE, FRSL (born 29 April 1937) is an English novelist and children's writer. She may be known best for the Peter Wimsey–Harriet Vane mysteries that have completed or continued the work of Dorothy Sayers.

Personal life

Born Gillian Bliss, she was educated at St. Michael's Convent,[1] North Finchley, London, and she read English Literature at St Anne's College, Oxford. She lives in Cambridge. In 1961, she married Antony Paton Walsh (died 30 December 2003); the couple had one son and two daughters. In 2004, she married John Rowe Townsend, who died in 2014.[2]

Her brother, Christopher, was Nuffield Professor of International Economics at Oxford University (1992–2007) and a Fellow of Nuffield College (1977–2007).

Honours

In 1996, Paton Walsh received the CBE for services to literature and was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. In 1998 she won the Phoenix Award from the Children's Literature Association, recognising A Chance Child as the best children's book published twenty years earlier that did not win a major award.[3]

On writing for children

In an essay on realism in children's literature, Walsh stated that realism (like fantasy) is also metaphorical, and that she would like the relationship between the reader and her characters Bill and Julie to be as metaphorical as that between "dragons and the reader's greed or courage".[4]

Works

Knowledge of Angels (1993), a medieval philosophical novel, shortlisted for the 1994 Booker Prize Other adult novels include:

Imogen Quy

Paton Walsh wrote four detective stories featuring part-time college nurse Imogen Quy, set in fictional St. Agatha's College, University of Cambridge:

Lord Peter Wimsey

In 1998, she won acclaim for her completion of Dorothy L. Sayers' unfinished Lord Peter Wimsey–Harriet Vane novel, Thrones, Dominations. In 2002, she followed this up with another Lord Peter novel, A Presumption of Death. In 2010, she published a third, The Attenbury Emeralds.[5] Her latest addition to the series, The Late Scholar, was published 5 December 2013 in the UK, and 14 January 2014 in North America.[6]

Children's books

Bibliography

References

  1. ↑ ... As seen by Jill Paton Walsh
  2. ↑ Guardian obituary
  3. ↑ "Phoenix Award Brochure 2012". Children's Literature Association. Retrieved 2 March 2013.
    See also the current homepage, "Phoenix Award".
  4. ↑ Walsh, Jill Paton; Betsy Hearne, Marilyn Kaye (eds) (1981). Celebrating Children's Books: Essays on Children's Literature in Honor of Zena Sutherland. New York: Lathrop, Lee, and Shepard Books. p. 37. ISBN 0-688-00752-X.
  5. ↑ The Attenbury Emeralds. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 2010. ISBN 978-0-340-99572-3.
  6. ↑ The Late Scholar. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 2014. Paperback, 368 pages. ISBN 1444751905, ISBN 978-1444751901.
  7. ↑ Hengest's tale. Library of Congress Catalog Record. Retrieved 26 August 2013.
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