'When was published, I was alarmed to find that it was believed to be autobiographical, with the characters actual members of my family, and myself the character Daphne upon whom a brain operation was performed. She wrote her first novel ( Owls Do Cry) while staying in a rented hut in fellow author Frank Sargeson’s back garden, and then left New Zealand in 1957, not to return for seven years. She sought the support and company of other writers and set out single-mindedly and courageously to achieve her goal of being accepted as a writer. After this accolade and reprieve, Janet Frame returned to society, but not the one that had labelled her a misfit. She continued to write throughout her troubled years, and her first book The Lagoon and Other Stories (1952) won a prestigious literary prize, thus convincing her doctors not to carry out a scheduled lobotomy. The story of her almost miraculous survival of the horrors and brutalising treatment in unenlightened institutions has become an inspiration. Between the admissions to hospitals she earned her living by doing domestic live-in work and writing in her spare time. Between 19 Janet Frame spent a total of four and a half years in several New Zealand mental hospitals after being initially misdiagnosed with schizophrenia based on the word of an unqualified university tutor and without any proper medical investigation. Desperately unhappy because of family tragedies and finding herself heading towards the wrong vocation (as a schoolteacher), her only escape appeared to be in submission to society's judgement of her as abnormal. The fate befalling the young woman who walked out of her classroom because she wanted to be a poet has been well documented. ‘They think I'm going to be a schoolteacher but I'm going to be a poet’ (From To the Is-Land: An Autobiography Volume 1)

However writing, especially for a woman, was not regarded as a 'real job'.

She was raised with a love of words, of literature and of nature, and her writing talent was recognised at an early age. Janet Frame was born in Dunedin New Zealand in 1924 into a working class family.

JANET FRAME 28 August 1924 - 29 January 2004

Owls do cry by janet frame