After being misdiagnosed with schizophrenia as a young woman. Janet Frame spent several years in psychiatric institutions. She escaped undergoing a lobotomy when it was discovered that she had just won a national literary prize. She then went on to become New Zealand's most acclaimed writer. As she says more than once in this autobiography: 'My writing saved me.'
Originally published in three separate volumes:
To the Is-Land first published in 1982
An Angel at My Table first published in 1984
The Envoy from Mirror City first published in 1985
Author(s): Janet Frame
Series: Janet Frame Autobiography 1-3
Edition: Paperback
Publisher: Virago
Year: 2010
Language: English
Pages: 523
City: London
Contents
Virago Modern Classics 533
Also by Janet Frame
Copyright
Introduction by Jane Campion
Volume One: To the Is-Land
Dedication
1 In the Second Place
2 Toward the Is-Land
3 In Velvet Gown
4 The Railway People
5 Ferry Street, Wyndham
6 Hark, Hark, the Dogs Do Bark
7 Fifty-six Eden Street, Oamaru
8 Death and a Sickness
9 Poppy
10 OK Permanent Wave
11 The Prince of Sleep
12 Cures
13 The Birds of the Air
14 Pastimes
15 Gussy and the Invercargill March
16 The Athenaeum
17 Clothed in White Samite
18 Picnics
19 A Death
20 Once Paumanok
21 The Hungry Generations
22 The Kingdom by the Sea
23 Scrapers and Bluey
24 Faust and the Piano
25 Marking Time
26 Early Spring Snow
27 ‘That’s Not You, Jasper’
28 University Entrance
29 Imagination
30 A Country Full of Rivers
31 Leaving the Is-Land, Greeting the Is-Land
Volume Two: An Angel at My Table
Dedication
Epigraph
PART ONE: TRICKS OF DESPERATION
1 The Stone
2 Number Four Garden Terrace, Dunedin
3 The Student
4 Again ‘A Country Full of Rivers’
5 Isabel and the Growth of Cities
6 Willowglen
7 1945 (One)
8 1945 (Two)
9 1945 (Three)
10 1945 (Four)
11 The Boardinghouse and the New World
12 Willowglen Summer
13 Another Death by Water
14 Dear Educated
15 Threading Needles
PART TWO: FINDING THE SILK
16 Grand Hotel
17 Mr Brasch and Landfall
18 The Photograph and the Electric Blanket
19 Up North
20 Mr Sargeson and the Army Hut
21 Talk of Treasure
22 The Pine Trees in the Cool of the Evening
23 A Death
24 The Silkworms
25 Miss Lincoln, Beatrix Potter and Dr Donne
26 Advice to the Traveller
27 The Traveller
Volume Three: The Envoy from Mirror City
Dedication
PART ONE: TRIPLE WITNESS
1 Earthless, the Sailing
2 The Gentleman
3 Keats and the Storytellers of Battersea
4 Three
5 A Game of Chess
6 Plaza Roma
7 Calle Ignacio Riquer
8 Soap-New People
9 The Pine Trees
10 El Americano
11 Figuretti’s
12 Andorra
PART TWO: AT HOME IN THE CITY
13 London
14 Questions
15 The Investigation and the Verdict
16 Dr Cawley and the Luxury of Time
17 Grove Hill Road and the Life of a Writer
18 Friends in London
19 Meeting the Publisher
20 A Cottage in the Country
21 An Apartment in the City
22 The Return
23 Willowglen
24 Only to Please the Envoy
Acknowledgments
