Leon Garfield
Leon Garfield | |
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Born | 1970 | 14 July 1921
Leon Garfield
Life
Garfield attended Brighton Grammar School (1932–1938) and went on to study art at Regent Street Polytechnic, but his studies were interrupted first by lack of funds for fees, then by the outbreak of World War II.[1] He married Lena Leah Davies in April, 1941, at Golders Green Synagogue but they separated after only a few months.[1] For his service in the war he joined the Royal Army Medical Corps. While posted in Belgium he met Vivien Alcock, then an ambulance driver, who became his second wife (in 1948) and a well-known children's author. She also greatly influenced Garfield's writing, giving him suggestions, including the original idea for Smith.[2]
After the war Garfield worked as a biochemical laboratory technician at the Whittington Hospital in Islington, writing in his spare time until the 1960s, when he was successful enough to write full-time.[3]
In 1964 the Garfields adopted a baby girl whom they called Jane after Jane Austen, a favourite writer of both parents.[1]
Garfield wrote his first book, the
In 1970 Garfield's work started to move in new directions with
Garfield was elected a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 1985. On 2 June 1996 he died of cancer at the Whittington Hospital, where he had once worked.[1]
Themes, influences, style
Garfield's novels for children all have historical settings. The early novels are mostly set in the late eighteenth century, but from John Diamond on they tend to be set in the nineteenth century.[7] They are not novels about major historical events, which are rarely depicted, or social conditions, which provide only starting points for the personal stories of the characters.[8] In the few novels in which Garfield handles actual events he writes of them from the limited and subjective viewpoints of his characters.[9]
The novels owe much to Charles Dickens[1][10] and to Robert Louis Stevenson.[11] The latter's Treasure Island clearly provided a model for Jack Holborn, with its shifting alliances of manipulative characters in pursuit of a treasure. Garfield also acknowledged the brothers in Stevenson's The Master of Ballantrae as inspiration for the book.[12] Beyond these specific debts, Garfield shares Stevenson's fondness for binding a relatively conservative hero to a more forceful personality outside the bounds of conventional morality.[a] Another recurring plot line, most evident in Smith and The December Rose, in which an outcast is integrated into a supporting household, owes more to Dickens.[13] Garfield also shares with Dickens a preference for urban settings, generally in London.
Garfield's father broke off contact with him when he divorced his Jewish wife.[1][2] Roni Natov argues that this may have had an influence on Garfield's work, giving particular significance to fathers and father figures.[14]
Film and television
Many of Garfield's books have been adapted for film or television: Devil-in-the-Fog was televised in 1968;
Awards
Devil-in-the-Fog (1966) won the inaugural Guardian Children's Fiction Prize in 1967. The newspaper-sponsored Prize is judged by a panel of children's writers and it annually recognises one new British children's novel by an author who has not won it.[4]
The God Beneath the Sea (1970) won the annual
John Diamond (1980) won the
Smith won the 1987 Phoenix Award (from the mythical phoenix, which is reborn from its ashes[5]) from the Children's Literature Association as the best English-language children's book that did not win a major award when originally published.
In The Guardian, Francis Spufford named The God Beneath the Sea one of the greatest children's books, calling it "visceral, overpowering, defiantly undomesticated", adding, "Read this as a child, and ever after you understand why Prometheus and Pandora are down there at the roots of the West's imagination."[24]
In the May Hill Arbuthnot Honor Lecture, Philip Pullman praised Garfield as "someone who put the best of his imagination into everything he wrote", particularly praising The Pleasure Garden.[25]
Selected works
- Jack Holborn (1964)
- Devil-in-the-Fog (1966)
- Smith (1967)
- Black Jack (1968)
- Mister Corbett's Ghost and Other Stories (1969)
- The Drummer Boy (1970)
- The God Beneath the Sea (Longman, 1970) ‡
- The Strange Affair of Adelaide Harris (1971)
- The Ghost Downstairs (1972)
- The Golden Shadow (Longman, 1973) ‡
- The Sound of Coaches (1974), illus. John Lawrence
- The Prisoners of September (1975)
- The Pleasure Garden (1976)
- The Confidence Man (1978)
- The Apprentices (1978)
- Bostock and Harris (1979); US title, The Night of the Comet
- John Diamond (Kestrel, 1980); US title, Footsteps
- The Mystery of Edwin Drood (Deutsch, 1980), by Charles Dickens and Garfield
- Fair's Fair (1981), illus. Margaret Chamberlain, picture book
- The House of Cards (1982)
- Shakespeare Stories (1985), illus. Michael Foreman
- The Wedding Ghost (1985)
- The December Rose (1986)
- The Empty Sleeve (1988)
- Blewcoat Boy (1988)
- Shakespeare Stories II (1994), illus. Michael Foreman
‡ The God Beneath the Sea (1970) and The Golden Shadow (1973) were written by Garfield and Edward Blishen, illustrated by Charles Keeping, and published by Longman.
See also
Notes
- ^ For example, in the pirate stories Jack Holborn and Black Jack on Garfield's part. Consider Stevenson's supporting characters Alan Breck Stewart in Kidnapped and Long John Silver in Treasure Island.
- Josephine Filmer-Sankey.CCSU As nonfiction that work was ineligible for the Guardian Prize, the new once-in-a-lifetime award that Garfield won.
- ^ Today there are usually eight books on the Carnegie shortlist. According to CCSU, there were about 160 commendations of two kinds in 49 years from 1954 to 2002, including four for 1967 (one highly commended), three 1968, and three 1970.
References
- ^ a b c d e f g Copson.
- ^ a b Natov, 5.
- ^ a b Carpenter and Prichard, 196–97.
- ^ a b "Guardian children's fiction prize relaunched: Entry details and list of past winners". The Guardian 12 March 2001. Retrieved 2012-08-06.
- ^ a b "Phoenix Award" Archived 23 September 2015 at the Wayback Machine. Children's Literature Association. Retrieved 2012-12-14.
- ^ a b
(Carnegie Winner 1970) Archived 22 February 2012 at the CILIP. Retrieved 2012-08-06.
- ^ Natov, 105.
- ^ Townsend, 202; Natov, 132.
- ^ Natov, 13–14.
- ^ Natov 133.
- ^ Copson. Quotation: "His novels … owe much to the classic adventure story as epitomized by Robert Louis Stevenson."
- ^ Townsend, 214; Natov, 6, 17.
- ^ Natov, 21, on Smith and Oliver Twist.
- ^ Natov, passim.
- ^ "The Devil in the Fog (1968– )". IMDb.
- ^ "Smith (1970– )". IMDb.
- ^ "The Strange Affair of Adelaide Harris (1979– )". IMDb.
- ^ "The Ghost Downstairs (1982)". IMDb.
- ^ "The Restless Ghost (1983)". IMDb.
- ^ Natov, 15.
- ^ "The December Rose (1986– )". IMDb.
- ^ "Carnegie Medal Award" Archived 14 October 2018 at the Wayback Machine. 2007(?). Curriculum Lab. Elihu Burritt Library. Central Connecticut State University (CCSU). Retrieved 2012-08-10.
- ^ (past_winners_complete_list.pdf) Archived 28 October 2012 at the Wayback Machine. Costa Book Awards. Retrieved 2012-12-14.
- ^ Spufford, Francis (29 November 2001). "The greatest stories ever told". The Guardian.
- ^ Pullman, Philip (28 December 2002). "Voluntary Service". The Guardian.
- Citations
- H. Carpenter and M. Prichard, The Oxford Companion to Children's Literature (Oxford: OUP, 1984); official website
- B. Copson, "Garfield, Leon (1921–1996)", Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (OUP), September 2004; online editionJanuary 2007
- R. Natov, Leon Garfield (New York: Twayne Publishers, 1994)
- J. R. Townsend, Written for Children: An Outline of English-language Children's Literature (London: Penguin, ed. 3, 1987); first edition 1965
Further reading
- Feay, Suzi (June–July 2014). "On re-reading Leon Garfield". The London Magazine: 5–10.
External links
- leongarfield.com
- Leon Garfield at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database
- The mystery of Edwin Drood in libraries (WorldCat catalog) —immediately, the first edition of Garfield's version
- Shakespeare Stories in libraries (WorldCat catalog) —immediately, the first edition
- Shakespeare Stories II in libraries (WorldCat catalog) —immediately, a record for the first edition
- Leon Garfield at Library of Congress, with 82 library catalogue records