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Happy 80th, Jill Paton Walsh! (British mystery & SF novelist: "A Chance Child," 1978)
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leno...@yahoo.com
Apr 29, 2017, 12:05:49 PM4/29/17
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Aka Gillian Paton Walsh, Gillian Paton-Walsh, and Gillian Bliss, she lives in Cambridge, England.
I had no idea she was married to the late John Rowe Townsend! (Or I just forgot.)
From Wikipedia:
"She may be known best for the Peter Wimsey–Harriet Vane mysteries that have completed or continued the work of Dorothy Sayers."
http://www.encyclopedia.com/arts/educational-magazines/paton-walsh-jill-1937
(This includes fascinating details about her early life - and a LONG autobiographical essay)
First paragraphs:
Jill Paton Walsh is noted for her works for young readers that deal realistically with life, death, and maturation. While her novels vary widely in terms of genre and style, noted Judith Atkinson in Twentieth-Century Children's Writers, "the most immediately attractive features of these novels ... are their absorbing plots and believable settings." "Of [the many] skilled and sensitive writers [for young people]," declared Sheila Egoff in Thursday's Child: Trends and Patterns in Contemporary Children's Literature, "[Paton] Walsh is the most formally literary. Her writing is studded with allusions to poetry, art and philosophy that give it an intellectual framework unmatched in children's literature." Paton Walsh's works examine eras and topics such as life, death, and honor in Anglo-Saxon England, Victorian child labor in England, growing up in World War II England, life in the Early Stone Age, and loyalty in the midst of destruction in fifteenth-century Byzantium. She has also written several novels that center on the Cornish coast, where she spent part of her childhood.
Paton Walsh was born Gillian Bliss, a member of a loving family living in suburban London. Her father was an engineer, one of the earliest experimenters with television, and he and his wife actively stimulated their children to enjoy learning. "For the whole of our childhoods," Paton Walsh once wrote, "I, and my brothers and sister--I am the eldest of four--were surrounded by love and encouragement on a lavish scale. ... And to an unusual degree everyone was without prejudices against, or limited ambitions for, girls. As much was expected of me as of my brothers."...
AWARDS:
"Book World Festival award, 1970, for Fireweed; Whitbread Prize (shared with Russell Hoban), 1974, for The Emperor's Winding Sheet; Boston Globe-Horn Book Award, 1976, for Unleaving; Arts Council creative writing fellowship, 1976-77, and 1977-78; Universe Prize, 1984, for A Parcel of Patterns; Smarties Prize Grand Prix, 1984, for Gaffer Samson's Luck; named Commander of the British Empire, 1996; Phoenix Award, 1998, for A Chance Child."
About some of her sci-fi novels:
A Chance Child, 1978:
"Creep accidentally travels back in time to the British Industrial Revolution, while, in the present, his half brother is anxiously searching for him...Compelled to search for his half brother Creep who some people insist is nonexistent, Christopher locates Parliamentary Papers containing Nathaniel Creep's personal narrative of working conditions during the Industrial Revolution 100 years earlier...Christopher went looking for the missing "Creep" - a waif whose 'earlier' life had been lived out along the Staffordshire waterways and the blast furnaces of the early Industrial Revolution. But Creep wasn't lost. He had returned to where there were many children like himself."
The Green Book (aka Shine), 1981:
"Pattie and her family are among the last refugees to flee a dying Earth in an old spaceship. And when the group finally lands on the distant planet which is to be their new home, it seems that the four-year journey has been a success. But as they begin to settle this shiny new world, they discover that the colony is in serious jeopardy. Nothing on this planet is edible, and they may not be able to grow food. With supplies dwindling, Pattie and her sister decide to take the one chance that might make life possible on Shine."
http://www.sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/paton_walsh_jill
(more on her other SF titles)
http://farah-sf.blogspot.com/2005/02/warning-very-long-post-jill-paton.html
(more on "The Green Book")
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)
https://www.google.com/?gws_rd=ssl#q=jill+paton+walsh+interview&spf=118
(interviews)
https://timetraveltimestwo.com/2016/04/25/a-chance-child-by-jill-paton-walsh/
(review of "A Chance Child")
https://www.google.com/?gws_rd=ssl#q=jill+paton+walsh+wimsey&spf=1959
(more on the Wimsey mysteries)
https://www.google.com/?gws_rd=ssl#q=jill+paton+walsh&tbm=vid&spf=677
(videos)
WRITINGS:
FICTION FOR YOUNG READERS
•Hengest's Tale, illustrated by Janet Margrie, St. Martin's Press (New York, NY), 1966.
•The Dolphin Crossing, St. Martin's Press (New York, NY), 1967.
•Fireweed, Macmillan (London, England), 1969, Farrar, Straus (New York, NY), 1970.
•Goldengrove, Farrar, Straus (New York, NY), 1972.
•Farewell, Great King, Coward McCann, 1972.
•Toolmaker, illustrated by Jeroo Roy, Heinemann (London, England), 1973, Seabury Press (New York, NY), 1974.
•The Dawnstone, illustrated by Mary Dinsdale, Hamish Hamilton (London, England), 1973.
•The Emperor's Winding Sheet, Farrar, Straus (New York, NY), 1974.
•The Huffler, Farrar, Straus (New York, NY), 1975, published as The Butty Boy, illustrated by Juliette Palmer, Macmillan (London, England), 1975.
•Unleaving, Farrar, Straus (New York, NY), 1976.
•The Walls of Athens (also see below), illustrated by David Smee, Heinemann (London, England), 1977.
•Crossing to Salamis (also see below), illustrated by David Smee, Heinemann (London, England), 1977.
•Persian Gold (also see below), illustrated by David Smee, Heinemann (London, England), 1978.
•A Chance Child, Farrar, Straus (New York, NY), 1978.
•Children of the Fox (contains Crossing to Salamis, The Walls of Athens, and Persian Gold), Farrar, Straus (New York, NY), 1978.
•The Green Book, illustrated by Joanna Stubbs, Macmillan (London, England), 1981, illustrated by Lloyd Bloom, Farrar, Straus (New York, NY), 1982, published as Shine, Macdonald (London, England), 1988.
•Babylon, illustrated by Jenny Northway, Deutsch (London, England), 1982.
•A Parcel of Patterns, Farrar, Straus (New York, NY), 1983.
•Lost and Found, illustrated by Mary Rayner, Deutsch (London, England), 1984.
•Gaffer Samson's Luck, illustrated by Brock Cole, Farrar, Straus (New York, NY), 1984.
•Five Tides, Green Bay, 1986.
•Torch, Viking (New York, NY), 1987.
•Birdy and the Ghosties, illustrated by Alan Marks, Macdonald (London, England), 1989.
•Can I Play Jenny Jones?, Bodley Head (London, England), 1990.
•Can I Play Queenie?, Bodley Head (London, England), 1990.
•Grace, Viking (New York, NY), 1991.
•Can I Play Farmer, Farmer?, Bodley Head (London, England), 1992.
•Can I Play Wolf?, Bodley Head (London, England), 1992.
•Matthew and the Sea Singer, Farrar, Straus (New York, NY), 1993.
•Thomas and the Tinners, Hodder Wayland (London, England), 1995.
PICTURE BOOKS
•When Grandma Came, illustrated by Sophie Williams, Viking (New York, NY), 1992.
•Pepi and the Secret Names, Lee & Shepard (New York, NY), 1995.
•Connie Came to Play, Viking (New York, NY), 1995.
•When I Was Little Like You, Viking (New York, NY), 1997.
ADULT NOVELS
•Lapsing, Weidenfeld & Nicolson (London, England), 1986, St. Martin's Press (New York, NY), 1987.
•A School for Lovers, Weidenfeld & Nicolson (London, England), 1989.
•Knowledge of Angels, Houghton Mifflin (Boston, MA), 1994.
•The Serpentine Cave, St. Martin's Press (New York, NY), 1997.
•A Desert in Bohemia, Doubleday (New York, NY), 2000.
"IMOGEN QUY" MYSTERY SERIES
•The Wyndham Case, St. Martin's Press (New York, NY), 1993.
•A Piece of Justice, St. Martin's Press (New York, NY), 1995.
•Debts of Dishonor, St. Martin's Minotaur (New York, NY), 2006.
•The Bad Quarto, St. Martin's Minotaur (New York, NY), 2007.
"LORD PETER WIMSEY AND HARRIET VANE" SERIES
•(With Dorothy Sayers) Thrones, Dominations, St. Martin's Press (New York, NY), 1998.
•(With Dorothy Sayers) A Presumption of Death, St. Martin's Minotaur (New York, NY), 2002.
•The Attenbury Emeralds, Hodder & Stoughton (London, England), 2010, Minotaur Books (New York, NY), 2011.
•The Late Scholar, Hodder & Stoughton (London, England), 2013, St. Martin's Press (New York, NY), 2014.
OTHER
•(With Kevin Crossley Holland) Wordhoard: Anglo-Saxon Stories (collection), Farrar, Straus (New York, NY), 1969.
•(Editor) Beowulf (structural reader), Longman, 1975.
•The Island Sunrise: Prehistoric Britain (nonfiction), Deutsch (London, England), 1975, published as The Island Sunrise: Prehistoric Culture in the British Isles, Seabury Press (New York, NY), 1976.
Lenona.
I had no idea she was married to the late John Rowe Townsend! (Or I just forgot.)
From Wikipedia:
"She may be known best for the Peter Wimsey–Harriet Vane mysteries that have completed or continued the work of Dorothy Sayers."
http://www.encyclopedia.com/arts/educational-magazines/paton-walsh-jill-1937
(This includes fascinating details about her early life - and a LONG autobiographical essay)
First paragraphs:
Jill Paton Walsh is noted for her works for young readers that deal realistically with life, death, and maturation. While her novels vary widely in terms of genre and style, noted Judith Atkinson in Twentieth-Century Children's Writers, "the most immediately attractive features of these novels ... are their absorbing plots and believable settings." "Of [the many] skilled and sensitive writers [for young people]," declared Sheila Egoff in Thursday's Child: Trends and Patterns in Contemporary Children's Literature, "[Paton] Walsh is the most formally literary. Her writing is studded with allusions to poetry, art and philosophy that give it an intellectual framework unmatched in children's literature." Paton Walsh's works examine eras and topics such as life, death, and honor in Anglo-Saxon England, Victorian child labor in England, growing up in World War II England, life in the Early Stone Age, and loyalty in the midst of destruction in fifteenth-century Byzantium. She has also written several novels that center on the Cornish coast, where she spent part of her childhood.
Paton Walsh was born Gillian Bliss, a member of a loving family living in suburban London. Her father was an engineer, one of the earliest experimenters with television, and he and his wife actively stimulated their children to enjoy learning. "For the whole of our childhoods," Paton Walsh once wrote, "I, and my brothers and sister--I am the eldest of four--were surrounded by love and encouragement on a lavish scale. ... And to an unusual degree everyone was without prejudices against, or limited ambitions for, girls. As much was expected of me as of my brothers."...
AWARDS:
"Book World Festival award, 1970, for Fireweed; Whitbread Prize (shared with Russell Hoban), 1974, for The Emperor's Winding Sheet; Boston Globe-Horn Book Award, 1976, for Unleaving; Arts Council creative writing fellowship, 1976-77, and 1977-78; Universe Prize, 1984, for A Parcel of Patterns; Smarties Prize Grand Prix, 1984, for Gaffer Samson's Luck; named Commander of the British Empire, 1996; Phoenix Award, 1998, for A Chance Child."
About some of her sci-fi novels:
A Chance Child, 1978:
"Creep accidentally travels back in time to the British Industrial Revolution, while, in the present, his half brother is anxiously searching for him...Compelled to search for his half brother Creep who some people insist is nonexistent, Christopher locates Parliamentary Papers containing Nathaniel Creep's personal narrative of working conditions during the Industrial Revolution 100 years earlier...Christopher went looking for the missing "Creep" - a waif whose 'earlier' life had been lived out along the Staffordshire waterways and the blast furnaces of the early Industrial Revolution. But Creep wasn't lost. He had returned to where there were many children like himself."
The Green Book (aka Shine), 1981:
"Pattie and her family are among the last refugees to flee a dying Earth in an old spaceship. And when the group finally lands on the distant planet which is to be their new home, it seems that the four-year journey has been a success. But as they begin to settle this shiny new world, they discover that the colony is in serious jeopardy. Nothing on this planet is edible, and they may not be able to grow food. With supplies dwindling, Pattie and her sister decide to take the one chance that might make life possible on Shine."
http://www.sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/paton_walsh_jill
(more on her other SF titles)
http://farah-sf.blogspot.com/2005/02/warning-very-long-post-jill-paton.html
(more on "The Green Book")
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)
https://www.google.com/?gws_rd=ssl#q=jill+paton+walsh+interview&spf=118
(interviews)
https://timetraveltimestwo.com/2016/04/25/a-chance-child-by-jill-paton-walsh/
(review of "A Chance Child")
https://www.google.com/?gws_rd=ssl#q=jill+paton+walsh+wimsey&spf=1959
(more on the Wimsey mysteries)
https://www.google.com/?gws_rd=ssl#q=jill+paton+walsh&tbm=vid&spf=677
(videos)
WRITINGS:
FICTION FOR YOUNG READERS
•Hengest's Tale, illustrated by Janet Margrie, St. Martin's Press (New York, NY), 1966.
•The Dolphin Crossing, St. Martin's Press (New York, NY), 1967.
•Fireweed, Macmillan (London, England), 1969, Farrar, Straus (New York, NY), 1970.
•Goldengrove, Farrar, Straus (New York, NY), 1972.
•Farewell, Great King, Coward McCann, 1972.
•Toolmaker, illustrated by Jeroo Roy, Heinemann (London, England), 1973, Seabury Press (New York, NY), 1974.
•The Dawnstone, illustrated by Mary Dinsdale, Hamish Hamilton (London, England), 1973.
•The Emperor's Winding Sheet, Farrar, Straus (New York, NY), 1974.
•The Huffler, Farrar, Straus (New York, NY), 1975, published as The Butty Boy, illustrated by Juliette Palmer, Macmillan (London, England), 1975.
•Unleaving, Farrar, Straus (New York, NY), 1976.
•The Walls of Athens (also see below), illustrated by David Smee, Heinemann (London, England), 1977.
•Crossing to Salamis (also see below), illustrated by David Smee, Heinemann (London, England), 1977.
•Persian Gold (also see below), illustrated by David Smee, Heinemann (London, England), 1978.
•A Chance Child, Farrar, Straus (New York, NY), 1978.
•Children of the Fox (contains Crossing to Salamis, The Walls of Athens, and Persian Gold), Farrar, Straus (New York, NY), 1978.
•The Green Book, illustrated by Joanna Stubbs, Macmillan (London, England), 1981, illustrated by Lloyd Bloom, Farrar, Straus (New York, NY), 1982, published as Shine, Macdonald (London, England), 1988.
•Babylon, illustrated by Jenny Northway, Deutsch (London, England), 1982.
•A Parcel of Patterns, Farrar, Straus (New York, NY), 1983.
•Lost and Found, illustrated by Mary Rayner, Deutsch (London, England), 1984.
•Gaffer Samson's Luck, illustrated by Brock Cole, Farrar, Straus (New York, NY), 1984.
•Five Tides, Green Bay, 1986.
•Torch, Viking (New York, NY), 1987.
•Birdy and the Ghosties, illustrated by Alan Marks, Macdonald (London, England), 1989.
•Can I Play Jenny Jones?, Bodley Head (London, England), 1990.
•Can I Play Queenie?, Bodley Head (London, England), 1990.
•Grace, Viking (New York, NY), 1991.
•Can I Play Farmer, Farmer?, Bodley Head (London, England), 1992.
•Can I Play Wolf?, Bodley Head (London, England), 1992.
•Matthew and the Sea Singer, Farrar, Straus (New York, NY), 1993.
•Thomas and the Tinners, Hodder Wayland (London, England), 1995.
PICTURE BOOKS
•When Grandma Came, illustrated by Sophie Williams, Viking (New York, NY), 1992.
•Pepi and the Secret Names, Lee & Shepard (New York, NY), 1995.
•Connie Came to Play, Viking (New York, NY), 1995.
•When I Was Little Like You, Viking (New York, NY), 1997.
ADULT NOVELS
•Lapsing, Weidenfeld & Nicolson (London, England), 1986, St. Martin's Press (New York, NY), 1987.
•A School for Lovers, Weidenfeld & Nicolson (London, England), 1989.
•Knowledge of Angels, Houghton Mifflin (Boston, MA), 1994.
•The Serpentine Cave, St. Martin's Press (New York, NY), 1997.
•A Desert in Bohemia, Doubleday (New York, NY), 2000.
"IMOGEN QUY" MYSTERY SERIES
•The Wyndham Case, St. Martin's Press (New York, NY), 1993.
•A Piece of Justice, St. Martin's Press (New York, NY), 1995.
•Debts of Dishonor, St. Martin's Minotaur (New York, NY), 2006.
•The Bad Quarto, St. Martin's Minotaur (New York, NY), 2007.
"LORD PETER WIMSEY AND HARRIET VANE" SERIES
•(With Dorothy Sayers) Thrones, Dominations, St. Martin's Press (New York, NY), 1998.
•(With Dorothy Sayers) A Presumption of Death, St. Martin's Minotaur (New York, NY), 2002.
•The Attenbury Emeralds, Hodder & Stoughton (London, England), 2010, Minotaur Books (New York, NY), 2011.
•The Late Scholar, Hodder & Stoughton (London, England), 2013, St. Martin's Press (New York, NY), 2014.
OTHER
•(With Kevin Crossley Holland) Wordhoard: Anglo-Saxon Stories (collection), Farrar, Straus (New York, NY), 1969.
•(Editor) Beowulf (structural reader), Longman, 1975.
•The Island Sunrise: Prehistoric Britain (nonfiction), Deutsch (London, England), 1975, published as The Island Sunrise: Prehistoric Culture in the British Isles, Seabury Press (New York, NY), 1976.
Lenona.
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