Joan Aiken
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About Me:
I was born in Rye, Sussex on September 4 1924. My father Conrad Aiken was a well known American Poet and won the 1930 Pulitzer Prize for his Selected Poems. My mother and step-father were also writers. I had a lot of alone time as a child, which gave me a chance to write often. I was home-schooled until the age of 12 when I went to a boarding school in Oxford. In 1945 I married Ronald Brown, and we had two children. He sadly died of illness in 1955. I got married again in 1976 to Julius Goldstein, an American painter. When I’m not writing, I enjoy painting and gardening at my home in Petworth, Sussex.
My Career:
I began writing at the age of 5 and finished my first novel at the age of 16. I got my first job at BBC which broadcast some of my first short stories. After my husband died I got a job at Argosy magazine, and then began writing advertising jingles at another company. In 1963 I finished The Wolves of Willoughby Chase which brought enough success I was able to quit my job. In 1969 my novel The Whispering Mountain won the Guardian Children's Book Award, and in 1972 Night Fall won America's Edgar Allan Poe Award for juvenile mystery.
My Quote:
"Stories are like butterflies, which come fluttering out of nowhere, touch down for a brief instant, may be captured, may not, and then vanish into nowhere again."
Influences:
My biggest influences as a writer were John Masefield's The Midnight Folk and The Box of Delights, they influenced me very much in my first full-length novel. But I also had other influences since I read so much as a child -- E.E. Nesbit, Francis Hodgson Burnett, Charles Dickens, Saki, James Thurber, and Edgar Allan Poe.
My Work:
I have written many short stories, poems, novels, and anthologies.
Poetry:
Anthologies:
- Pan Book of Horror Stories, the (1959)
- Winter's Crimes 5 (1973)
- Fantastic Imagination II, the (1978)
- Bestiary! (1985)
- Year’s Best Fantasy: First Annual Collection, the (1988)
- Year's Best Fantasy: Second Annual Collection, the (1989)
- Year's Best Fantasy and Horror: Third Annual Collection, the (1990)
- Murder Takes a Holiday (1992)
- Visions & Imaginings: Classic Fantasy Fiction (1992)
- Murder British Style (1993)
- Oxford Book of Modern Fairy Tales, the (1993)
- Christmas Forever (1993)
- Fantasy Stories (1994)
- Treasury of Stories for Four Year Olds, a (1994)
- Mammoth Book of Historical Detectives, the (1995)
- Random House Book of Fantasy Stories, the (1996)
- Mammoth Book of Fairy Tales, the (1997)
- 20th Century Children's Book Treasury, the (1998)
- Nightshade: 20th Century Ghost Stories (1999)
- Gothic!: Ten Original Dark Tales (2004)
Novels:
Short Stories:
Series:
Down Below
29 October 2001
There's a deep secret place, dark in the hold of this ship
A fine, private place, if one could get down there and hide
A whoel crossword puzzle of ladder and corridor lies
Between that world and the white decks, the smooth wide
Expanse of holystone and elbowgrace and pride.
Could one get downw there; but that's quite out of the question
I'll tell you why: clambering down to the door
Through these hot, narrow regions, you notice more and more strongly
A green growing odour seeping up through the floor
And the damp solid breath of mould, savagely pure.
That dooor can't be opened; it's blocked tight shut inside
Crammed against earth adn greenery, all intertwined- -
Roses, perhaps? The ship is listing, but skipper,
Though the hold should be cleared, is afraid of what we'd find,
He believes there's stowaways down there - - but, good lord, what kind?
Down Below
A analysis of the poem offered by Lara
Sources Cited
Last Updated:
January 4, 2004
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