An Angel at My Table: The Complete AutobiographyThe autobiography of New Zealand's most significant writer New Zealand's preeminent writer Janet Frame brings the skill of an extraordinary novelist and poet to these vivid and haunting recollections, gathered here for the first time in a single volume. From a childhood and adolescence spent in a poor but intellectually intense railway family, through life as a student, and years of incarceration in mental hospitals, eventually followed by her entry into the saving world of writers and the "Mirror City" that sustains them, we are given not only a record of the events of a life, but also "the transformation of ordinary facts and ideas into a shining palace of mirrors." Frame's journey of self–discovery, from New Zealand to London, to Paris and Barcelona, and then home again, is a heartfelt and courageous account of a writer's beginnings as well as one woman's personal struggle to survive. This book contains selections from the long out–of–print collection entitled Janet Frame: An Autobiography (George Brazillier, 1991), which itself was originally published in three volumes: To the Is–land, An Angel at My Table, and The Envoy from Mirror City. |
Contents
Another Death by Water | |
Dear Educated | |
Threading Needles | |
Finding the Silk | |
Grand Hotel | |
Mr Brasch and Landfall | |
The Photograph and the Electric Blanket | |
Up North | |
O K Permanent Wave | |
The Prince of Sleep | |
Cures | |
The Birds of the | |
Pastimes | |
Gussy and the Invercargill March | |
The Athenaeum | |
Clothed in White Samite | |
Picnics | |
A Death | |
Once Paumanok | |
The Hungry Generations | |
The Kingdom by the | |
Scrapers and Bluey | |
Faust and the Piano | |
Marking Time | |
Early Spring Snow | |
Thats Not You Jasper | |
University Entrance | |
Imagination | |
A Country Full of Rivers | |
Leaving the IsLand Greeting the IsLand | |
AN ANGEL AT MY TABLE | |
Tricks of Desperation | |
The Stone | |
Number Four Garden Terrace Dunedin | |
The Student | |
Again A Country Full of Rivers | |
Isabel and the Growth of Cities | |
Willowglen | |
One | |
Two | |
Three | |
Four | |
The Boardinghouse and the New World | |
Willowglen Summer | |
Mr Sargeson and the Army | |
Talk of Treasure | |
The Pine Trees in the Cool of the Evening | |
A Death | |
The Silkworms | |
Miss Lincoln Beatrix Potter and Dr Donne | |
Advice to the Traveller | |
The Traveller | |
THE ENVOY FROM MIRROR CITY | |
Triple Witness | |
Earthless the Sailing | |
The Gentleman | |
Keats and the Storytellers of Battersea | |
Three | |
A Game of Chess | |
Plaza Roma | |
Calle Ignacio Riquer | |
SoapNew People | |
The Pine Trees | |
El Americano | |
Figurettis | |
Andorra | |
At Home in the City | |
London | |
Questions | |
The Investigation and the Verdict | |
Dr Cawley and the Luxury of Time | |
Grove Hill Road and the Life of a Writer | |
Friends in London | |
Meeting the Publisher | |
A Cottage in the Country | |
An Apartment in the City | |
The Return | |
Willowglen | |
Only to Please the Envoy | |
Acknowledgments | |
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afternoon Andorra arrived asked Auckland Aunty Isy Aunty Polly became bedroom began Blake Palmer bought Braiseworth Bruddie Charles Brasch clothes colour Dad’s dance dark door dreams dress Dunedin English eyes face father feeling felt Frank Sargeson friends garden girls grey hill hospital Ibiza imagination Isabel Janet Frame John Forrest Kaitangata kitchen knew learned leucotomy listened lived London looked matagouri Mirror City Miss Lincoln morning Mother Mount Maunganui Myrtle Myrtle’s never night Oamaru Patrick Reilly perhaps permanent wave pine play poems poet poetry Poppy railway realised remember returned Road schizophrenia Seacliff Sexton Blake sister sitting song stay stories Street T. S. Eliot talked teacher There’s thought told Training College trees walked watched week Willowglen window woman wondered words writing Zealand