Writers like Neil Gaiman cited her as a major influence. Academics wrote formal studies of her work. Starting in 1999, HarperCollins began reissuing her books for the Harry Potter generation, and Jones became a newly minted bestseller. They were committed to Jones’s ability to lovingly deconstruct the tropes of her genre, to the way she was able to brace her magical worlds with schoolmarmish common sense and yet at the same time make them breathe with wonder. Even when Jones’s books weren’t major sellers, she was prolific, and she was consistent: Her work was always critically admired, and her cult fanbase stayed loyally by her side. Howl’s Moving Castle was a midcareer book for Jones, whose first book was published in 1970 she then went on to publish roughly a book a year for the next 40 years. They had a sizeable backlist to work with. She’s the kind of author that you can meet for the first time at 10 years old and fall in love with, and then keep rereading for the rest of your life, always finding new layers - so by the time the Harry Potter boom hit in the late ’90s and created a ravenous audience for children’s fantasy, Jones had plenty of adult fans who had grown up on her books, now worked in the publishing industry, and were ready and willing to seize the moment for her. Even if you couldn’t fully understand the plot mechanics, her books always made complete emotional sense.Īnd because Jones’s books are crafted with so much complexity, they grow up with their readers. Eliot than I have.) But as challenging as Jones’s books could be, they were always written with a warmth and an immediacy and a sense of whimsy that welcomed her readers in. (I will be honest here: At 30 years old, I still don’t fully understand the ending of Fire and Hemlock, and I feel like grasping it entirely would require better knowledge of the works of T.S.
Jones was staunchly opposed to writing “down” to her child readers, with the result that adults often wondered whether her books might be too difficult for their target audience of late elementary through high school students. She rarely won awards, and her books slipped in and out of print, especially in the US. And Jones’s fans are ready and waiting for her moment, 33 years after Howl’s Moving Castle first came out.īack in 1986, Diana Wynne Jones was a respected children’s author, but she was also, as Farah Mendlesohn wrote for Tor in 2011, slightly under the radar. The Folio Society has released a new edition of her 1986 novel Howl’s Moving Castle, lavished with the kind of deluxe treatment - full-page, full-color illustrations printed endpapers an accompanying slipcase - that is generally reserved for books that have a sizable cult following. Diana Wynne Jones, the children’s fantasy author who is much beloved among those who know her but has never quite become a household name, took another step toward becoming canonical this month.