In April 2009 Otago University Press is publishing Passageways, Ann Thwaite's story of her New Zealand family.
Ann Thwaite has written five major biographies. AA Milne: His Life was the Whitbread Biography of the Year, 1990. Edmund Gosse: A Literary Landscape (Duff Cooper Prize, 1985) was described by John Carey as 'magnificent - one of the finest literary biographies of our time'. Glimpses of the Wonderful, about the life of Edmund's father, Philip Henry Gosse, was picked out by D.J. Taylor in the Independent as one of the 'Ten Best Biographies' ever. Frances Hodgson Burnett was originally published (1974) as Waiting for the Party and reissued in 2007 with the sub-title Beyond the Secret Garden. Emily Tennyson, The Poet's Wife (1996), will be reissued for the Tennyson bicentenary in 2009.
Born in London, Ann spent the war years in New Zealand, returning to complete her education at Queen Elizabeth's, Barnet, and St Hilda's College, Oxford. She has lived in Tokyo, Benghazi and Nashville, Tennessee. She has lectured in many countries, but most of her life has been spent as a writer, and she is now settled in Norfolk with her husband, the poet Anthony Thwaite. She is an Oxford D.Litt., and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. She is an Honorary Fellow of Roehampton University (National Centre for Research into Children's Literature) and has an honorary doctorate from the University of East Anglia.
For forty years, Ann Thwaite wrote children's books, including The Camelthorn Papers (1969), translated into Japanese and Greek, Tracks, a New Zealand story, and a much-loved picture book Gilbert and the Birthday Cake. Jan Mark included her story Feeding the Cats in the Oxford Book of Children's Stories (1993). She reviewed children's books, mainly in the Times Literary Supplement, for many years, and ran a library for local children in her home.
The Brilliant Career of Winnie-the-Pooh, a scrapbook off-shoot of her Milne biography, was published on both sides of the Atlantic in 1992. She edited (1968-1975) Allsorts, an annual collection which included new work for children by such writers as Michael Frayn, James Fenton, Penelope Lively and William Trevor. My Oxford (1977) contained memories of their time there by writers including John Mortimer, Antonia Fraser and Martin Amis. Her edition of Portraits from Life is a collection (1991) of Edmund Gosse's essays on his friends, including Henry James, Robert Louis Stevenson and Thomas Hardy.
BOOKS
Waiting for the Party: The Life of Frances Hodgson Burnett
A Little Princess and The Secret Garden are among the enduring classics of children’s literature. But few of today’s readers are aware that their author, Frances Hodgson Burnett, was one of the most famous literary figures of the Gilded Age. An extraordinary personality, Burnett rose from Tennessee poverty to become an intimate of President Garfield, Henry James, and a host of theatrical luminaries.
At times domineering, even brash, she was nonetheless insecure, even at the height of her fame. Her outer life mirrored the theme of her stories, where fortunes change for the better and people invariable triumph over circumstances. She published over fifty successful books and her plays were regularly performed in London and New York. Yet she also made headlines for her two failed marriages, endured the death of a son, and, despite her wealth and undeniable literary success, never obtained the measure of true contentment she longed for. Waiting for the Party is a moving, intelligent, and fully illustrated biography of a remarkable woman’s very full life; it is a portrait, as well, of her artistic milieu and the vibrant times in which she lived.
Edmund Gosse: A Literary Landscape
The life of Edmund Gosse was one of continuous contradiction. He was a precocious only child brought up by a father whose thinking was dominated by the Bible and the Actinologica Britannica. This book presents a picture of Edmund Gosse without ignoring his many contradictions, showing how they reflect the complexity of his singular genius.
A. A. Milne: His Life
A. A. Milne is one of the most successful English writers ever. His heart-warming creations - Winnie-the-Pooh, Christopher Robin, Eeyore, Tigger and Piglet - have become some of the best-loved children's characters of all time, and readers the world over are familiar with the stories from the Hundred Acre Wood. Yet the man himself has remained an enigma. Although in many ways his behaviour was that of a typical golf-playing, pipe-smoking Englishman, Milne refused to be typecast, and his publishers despaired when he turned from writing popular columns for Punch to detective stories. They complained again when the detective writer presented them with a set of children's verse, but when When We Were Very Young became one of the best-selling books of all time, Milne's credibility as one of the world's favourite authors was sealed. And yet, for his son Christopher Robin, the success of his father was to be an almost intolerable burden. In this prize-winning classic biography, Ann Thwaite reveals the man behind Pooh in all his complexity, including his experiences at the Somme in 1916 and his relationship with literary giants H. G. Wells, P. G. Wodehouse and J. M. Barrie. She constructs a vivid and poignant portrayal of the inscrutable man and his stories, which earned so much devotion among readers that, eighty years after their creation, this portrait of their creator remains a must for followers of Pooh - whatever their age.
Emily Tennyson: The Poet's Wife
It was as a small girl in Lincolnshire that Emily Sellwood first saw the boy Alfred Tennyson. Nearly thirty years later, in the year he became Poet Laureate, they married. What kept them apart and what eventually brought them together has never before been fully explored. Readers who know little about Tennyson, as well as admirers of his poetry, will find interest in this biography of a Victorian wife who was determined to be fully involved in the work of the man she loved. Drawing on a great deal of unpublished material, Ann Thwaite presents a much more unconventional, energetic and passionate woman than the pale invalid lying on a sofa somewhere in the background of Tennyson's life. This pioneering biography establishes in detail the person Emily Tennyson was. It is the story of a remarkable family as well as a remarkable woman, bringing into the foreground a neglected and often misunderstood character a century after her death.
Glimpses of the Wonderful: The Life of Philip Henry Gosse
After her acclaimed biographies of A. A. Milne and Emily Tennyson, Ann Thwaite examines the life of Philip Henry Gosse, the renowned Victorian naturalist, author, illustrator and Christian fundamentalist, who as both friend and antagonist of Charles Darwin was at the very heart of the Victorian conflict between science and religion.
'Extensively illustrated and full of eyecatching contemporary detail, Glimpses of the Wonderful is a masterpiece of Victorian biography.'
-Guardian (Book of the Week)
'Ann Thwaite, in this compelling, deeply moving biography, recreates Gosse as a warm, humorous and learned man, a devoted husband, father and grandfather; a brilliant zoologist, and, as a young man, an eager, brave explorer . . . Ann Thwaite has recreated a man, an era and a way of thought. Her brilliant, beautifully illustrated, poignant and illuminating book shows that, in their respect for the infinite variety of forms of life on this planet, the Victorians and ourselves are not so very far apart.'
-The Times
'Thwaite's biography is heroic in its subject and its zestful research. Engrossing to read, it is also beautifully produced, the illustrations and end-papers showing Gosse's paintings of lizards, beetles and other small creatures that seem to glow with love and fascination.'
-Sunday Times
Passageways: The story of a New Zealand family
Passageways, the family history of acclaimed biographer Ann Thwaite, is in equal parts a window on colonial times in many parts of New Zealand, the story of a generation of New Zealand ex-patriate intellectuals, a tender portrait of parent-child relations strained by distance, and a domestic account of World War II. The author writes with charm and erudition.
The author’s eight great grandparents all arrived in New Zealand between 1858 and 1868. Their family names were Harrop, Sales, Campbell, Brown, Valentine, Maxwell, Jefcoate and Oliver. She looks at their reasons for migration, how they fared once settled, and at their participation in gold-digging, farming, road-making, school-teaching and surveying. Both of her parents were graduates of Canterbury University. They founded and ran New Zealand News in London and A.J. Harrop became a respected New Zealand historian. This is an engaging portrait of a brilliant and unconventional New Zealand-British family.