Portrait of Joan Aiken. Retrieved from Wikipedia, public domain (accessed: January 25, 2022).
Joan Aiken
, 1924 - 2004
Joan Delano Aiken was a major writer of children’s literature, ghost stories, Regency romances, and literary adaptations of the works of Jane Austen. Born in 1924, in Rye, Sussex, she was the daughter of Conrad Aiken, an American poet, and Jessie MacDonald, a Master’s graduate from Radcliffe College in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Her parents divorce in 1929, and Jessie remarried (to the English writer Martin Armstrong). Aiken was taught at home by her mother until she turned twelve, then studied at Wychwood School for girls in North Oxford.
Aiken wrote stories from an early age, and had her first short story for adults published when she was seventeen. She worked for the United Nations Information Centre in London, and married Ronald George Brown, a journalist. They had two children, before he died in 1955. After his death, she worked in an editorial capacity for the journal Argosy and started publishing short stories there and in other journals. She published collections of children’s short stories, and then embarked on a novel named The Wolves of Willoughby Chase (1962), which was the first of the Wolves series of 12 historical romances, set in an alternative period of British history (the speculative reign of King James III, otherwise known as the ‘Old Pretender’), featuring characters such as the plucky Dido Twite, who travels around the world encountering adventures. These stories feature exciting plots, and many elements of Dickensian fiction (disinherited orphans, wicked governesses, plotters, usurpers, the very wealthy and the very poor). Other series include Arabel and Mortimer (1972-1995) a series of comic adventures featuring a girl named Arabel and her pet raven Mortimer. The Armitage stories feature the Armitage family, which is prone to mystical events occurring, usually on a Monday. Aiken also wrote for adults, including a series of novels inspired by minor characters from the works of Jane Austen (1984-2000). Overall, Aiken wrote more than 100 novels and stories.
In 1976, Aiken married the American artist and teacher, Julius Epstein. They divided their time between her home in Petworth, Sussex, and New York. She died in 2004.
Sources:
en.wikipedia.org (accessed: July 23, 2020);
britannica.com (accessed: July 23, 2020);
"Aiken, Joan 1924–2004", Contemporary Authors, New Revision Series, edited by Mary Ruby, vol. 238, Gale, 2012, 19–26. (accessed: July 23, 2020).
Bio prepared by Elizabeth Hale, University of New England, ehale@une.edu.au
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