Janet Frame

Janet Paterson Frame was born in Dunedin on 28 August 1924, the daughter of a railway employee, and grew up in Ōamaru; two of her sisters drowned. A student at the Dunedin teachers' college, she was committed in 1945 on a diagnosis of schizophrenia, later disputed, and spent nearly eight years in a psychiatric hospital, subjected to electroshock; a literary prize, in 1952, led to the cancellation of the planned lobotomy. She then lived for seven years in Europe, mostly in London, was appointed to the Order of New Zealand in 1990 and died in Dunedin on 29 January 2004.

In the catalogue 1

• NovelOwls Do CryJanet Frame · 1957Literature