Jane Gardam’s comment, “I started to write the day – no, the morning – that Tom [
her youngest child] went to school”, uneasily combines a proper femininity – motherhood must come first – with a sense of a desperately anticipated other life (Clark, 2011). Her first book was published in 1971 when she was 43. The late start has not limited output. Gardam has published, sometimes at the rate of two a year, fiction for adults, young adults and children, one non-fiction work,
The Iron Coast(1994), and, in
The Green Man(1998) illustrated by Mary Fedden, a rewriting of the ancient myth. Her short story collection,
The Stories of Jane Gardam(2014), is selected from eight earlier volumes and her stories have been broadcast, published in a range of magazines and anthologised.…
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Citation: Eagleton, Mary. "Jane Gardam's Trilogy: Old Filth (2004), The Man in the Wooden Hat (2009) and Last Friends (2013)". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 15 April 2021 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=39445, accessed 23 November 2024.]
