Janet McNeill

Janet McNeill (14 September 1907 – October 1994) was a prolific Irish novelist and playwright. Author of more than 20 children's books, as well as adult novels, plays, and two opera libretti, she was best known for her children's comic fantasy series My Friend Specs McCann.

Biography

Early life and marriage Janet McNeill was born on 14 September 1907 in Dublin to Rev. William McNeill, a minister at Adelaide Road Presbyterian Church, and Jeannie Patterson (Hogg) McNeill. In 1913 the family moved to Birkenhead, Merseyside, England, where her father became minister at Trinity Road Church. McNeill attended public school in Birkenhead and studied classics at the University of St Andrews, completing a MA degree in 1929. Though she planned to write her first novel early on, McNeill found it impossible to write seriously until the children grew up, saying: "It was four years before I had a baby and twenty five before I produced the book".

Writing career In 1946 McNeill won a prize in a BBC competition for her play Gospel Truth. She began writing radio dramas, which were broadcast by the BBC. She suffered a cerebral haemorrhage in 1953. During her recovery, she began writing novels both for adults and children, producing a large body of work between 1955 and 1964. Her popular children's character, Specs McCann, who debuted in a 1955 book and made several reappearances, also inspired a newspaper cartoon strip by Rowel Friers, a Belfast artist and friend of McNeill's.

Her 1944 novel The Maiden Dinosaur was her first to be published in the United States, 22 years later. She also had three writing credits on television with series and plays. Several of her plays were staged at the Ulster Group Theatre.

In 1964, her husband retired and the couple moved to Bristol. McNeill wrote one more novel after she left Northern Ireland, but continued to write children's books for another decade. During this time, she wrote her only children's play, published as Switch On, Switch Off, and other plays (1968), which presents different moral themes in scenes set in "domestic and workplace settings in contemporary England". Her children's book The Battle of St. George Without was televised by the BBC in 1969. She had a number of health problems and died in 1994.

Genre and themes

In her adult fiction, McNeill focused on the lifestyle and social mores of Belfast and Ulster in the mid-twentieth century. Her characters were primarily "menopausal, middle-aged, middle-class Protestants". She depicted the "dreary, Ulster religiosity" of ministers and laymen alike, and the class conventions and sexual repression of middle-aged, upper-middle-class women. The theme of suppressing self-identity and goals, both by wives in deference to their husbands and parents on behalf of their children, pervades her adult novels.

Awards 1968: Honorary Book Award, Book World Children's Spring Festival for The Battle of St. George Without.

Works

Novels

Short fiction A Light Dozen (Faber, 1957) Special Occasions (Faber, 1960) Wait For It, and Other Stories (Faber, 1972) Just Turn the Key, and Other Stories (Hamish Hamilton, 1976)

Children's books

Plays Gospel Truth (H. R. Carter, ) Signs and Wonders ([q.pub.], 1951) Switch-On, Switch-Off and Other Plays (Faber, 1968)