Janice Elliott

Janice Elliott (13 October 1931 – 25 July 1995)

Life Elliott was born in Derby and raised in Nottingham. She attended Nottingham Girls' High School and then read English at St. Anne's College, Oxford University.

She worked as a journalist in 1952–1962, notably for House and Garden and the Sunday Times, and then became a full-time writer, while continuing to write freelance press reviews. Meanwhile she married Robert Cooper, an oil executive and sailor, in 1959 and had a son.

Novels Elliott's debut novel Cave with Echoes was published by Secker & Warburg in 1962. This, like almost all her subsequent novels, was received with enthusiasm. Anthony Burgess commented that it had style, was genuinely constructed and that the characters were excellent. The Somnabulists (1964) featured a brother and sister alienated by their parents' early deaths. Secret Places (1981) was set in a girls' boarding school during World War II, and The Country of Her Dreams (1982) in a Balkan city picked to house a nuclear bunker for European art.

Published works

Cave with Echoes (1962) The Somnambulists (1964) The Godmother (1966) The Buttercup Chain (1967) The Singing Head (1968) Angels Falling (1969) The Birthday Unicorn (1970), illustrated by Michael Foreman, The Kindling (1970) A State of Peace (1971) Private Life (1972) Alexander in the Land of Mog (1973) Heaven on Earth (1975) A Loving Eye (1977) The Honey Tree (1978) The Summer People (1980)