Diana Wynne Jones (16 August 1934 – 26 March 2011) was an English novelist, poet, academic, literary critic, and short story writer.
In 1943 her family finally settled in Thaxted, Essex, where her parents worked running an educational conference centre.
Tolkien before graduating in 1956.
After a brief period in London, in 1957 the couple returned to Oxford, where they stayed until moving to Bristol in 1976. According to her autobiography, Jones decided she was an atheist when she was a child. ==Career== Jones started writing during the mid-1960s "mostly to keep my sanity", when the youngest of her three children was about two years old and the family lived in a house owned by an Oxford college.
In 1965, when Rhodesia declared independence unilaterally (one of the last colonies and not tiny), "I felt as if the book were coming true as I wrote it." Jones' books range from amusing slapstick situations to sharp social observation (Changeover is both), to witty parody of literary forms.
Her first book was a novel for adults published by Macmillan in 1970, entitled Changeover.
After a brief period in London, in 1957 the couple returned to Oxford, where they stayed until moving to Bristol in 1976. According to her autobiography, Jones decided she was an atheist when she was a child. ==Career== Jones started writing during the mid-1960s "mostly to keep my sanity", when the youngest of her three children was about two years old and the family lived in a house owned by an Oxford college.
Gaiman had already dedicated his 1991 four-part comic book mini-series The Books of Magic to "four witches", of whom Jones was one. For Charmed Life, the first Chrestomanci novel, Jones won the 1978 Guardian Children's Fiction Prize, a once-in-a-lifetime award by The Guardian newspaper that is judged by a panel of children's writers.
She won the Mythopoeic Fantasy Award, children's section, in 1996 for The Crown of Dalemark (concluding that series) and in 1999 for Dark Lord of Derkholm; in four other years she was a finalist for that annual literary award by the Mythopoeic Society. The 1986 novel Howl's Moving Castle was inspired by a boy at a school she was visiting, who asked her to write a book called The Moving Castle.
Gaiman had already dedicated his 1991 four-part comic book mini-series The Books of Magic to "four witches", of whom Jones was one. For Charmed Life, the first Chrestomanci novel, Jones won the 1978 Guardian Children's Fiction Prize, a once-in-a-lifetime award by The Guardian newspaper that is judged by a panel of children's writers.
It was adapted for television in 1992.
She was friends with both McKinley and Gaiman, and Jones and Gaiman were fans of each other's work; she dedicated her 1993 novel Hexwood to him after something he said in conversation inspired a key part of the plot.
She won the Mythopoeic Fantasy Award, children's section, in 1996 for The Crown of Dalemark (concluding that series) and in 1999 for Dark Lord of Derkholm; in four other years she was a finalist for that annual literary award by the Mythopoeic Society. The 1986 novel Howl's Moving Castle was inspired by a boy at a school she was visiting, who asked her to write a book called The Moving Castle.
She was twice a finalist for the Hugo Award, nominated fourteen times for the Locus Award, seven times for the Mythopoeic Award (which she won twice), twice for a British Fantasy Award (won in 1999), and twice for a World Fantasy Award, which she would also win in 2007. ==Early life and marriage== Jones was born in London, the daughter of Marjorie (née Jackson) and Richard Aneurin Jones, both of whom were teachers.
She won the Mythopoeic Fantasy Award, children's section, in 1996 for The Crown of Dalemark (concluding that series) and in 1999 for Dark Lord of Derkholm; in four other years she was a finalist for that annual literary award by the Mythopoeic Society. The 1986 novel Howl's Moving Castle was inspired by a boy at a school she was visiting, who asked her to write a book called The Moving Castle.
The Firebird edition has additional material and a completely new design, including a new map. The British Fantasy Society recognised her significant impact on fantasy with its Karl Edward Wagner Award in 1999.
It originated as the British Empire was divesting colonies; she recalled in 2004 that it had "seemed like every month, we would hear that yet another small island or tiny country had been granted independence." Changeover is set in a fictional African colony during transition, and begins as a memo about the problem of how to "mark changeover" ceremonially is misunderstood to be about the threat of a terrorist named Mark Changeover.
In 2004, Hayao Miyazaki made the Japanese-language animated movie Howl's Moving Castle, which was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature.
A version dubbed in English was released in the UK and US in 2005, with the voice of Howl performed by Christian Bale.
Next year Jones and the novel won the annual Phoenix Award from the Children's Literature Association, recognising the best children's book published twenty years earlier that did not win a major award (named for mythical bird phoenix to suggest the book's rise from obscurity). Fire and Hemlock had been the 2005 Phoenix runner-up.
It was reissued in the UK, and has been reissued in the United States in 2006 by Firebird Books.
She received an honorary D.Litt from the University of Bristol in July 2006 and the World Fantasy Award for Life Achievement in 2007. In August 2014, Google commemorated Jones with a Google Doodle created by Google artist Sophie Diao. ==Illness and death== Jones was diagnosed with lung cancer in the early summer of 2009.
She was twice a finalist for the Hugo Award, nominated fourteen times for the Locus Award, seven times for the Mythopoeic Award (which she won twice), twice for a British Fantasy Award (won in 1999), and twice for a World Fantasy Award, which she would also win in 2007. ==Early life and marriage== Jones was born in London, the daughter of Marjorie (née Jackson) and Richard Aneurin Jones, both of whom were teachers.
She received an honorary D.Litt from the University of Bristol in July 2006 and the World Fantasy Award for Life Achievement in 2007. In August 2014, Google commemorated Jones with a Google Doodle created by Google artist Sophie Diao. ==Illness and death== Jones was diagnosed with lung cancer in the early summer of 2009.
She received an honorary D.Litt from the University of Bristol in July 2006 and the World Fantasy Award for Life Achievement in 2007. In August 2014, Google commemorated Jones with a Google Doodle created by Google artist Sophie Diao. ==Illness and death== Jones was diagnosed with lung cancer in the early summer of 2009.
However, in June 2010 she announced that she would be discontinuing chemotherapy because it only made her feel ill.
Diana Wynne Jones (16 August 1934 – 26 March 2011) was an English novelist, poet, academic, literary critic, and short story writer.
She died on 26 March 2011 from the disease.
She was surrounded by her husband, three sons, and five grandchildren as she was cremated at Canford Cemetery. The story in progress when she became too ill to write, The Islands of Chaldea, was completed by her sister Ursula Jones in 2014. Interviewed by The Guardian in June 2013 after she finished the Chaldea story, Ursula Jones said that "other things were coming to light ...
She received an honorary D.Litt from the University of Bristol in July 2006 and the World Fantasy Award for Life Achievement in 2007. In August 2014, Google commemorated Jones with a Google Doodle created by Google artist Sophie Diao. ==Illness and death== Jones was diagnosed with lung cancer in the early summer of 2009.
She was surrounded by her husband, three sons, and five grandchildren as she was cremated at Canford Cemetery. The story in progress when she became too ill to write, The Islands of Chaldea, was completed by her sister Ursula Jones in 2014. Interviewed by The Guardian in June 2013 after she finished the Chaldea story, Ursula Jones said that "other things were coming to light ...
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