Jennifer Dawson

21 January 1929 - 14 October 2000

JD achieved an early reputation as a novelist of madness, in tune with 1960s ideas about the brilliant and eccentric visions of insanity being damped and persecuted by conformist social institutions. A friend observed that she writes with chilling insight about bleak places inhabited by bleak people;

Whitby, Joy. “In Memory of Jennifer Hinton (Dawson 1949)”. The Ship, pp. 54 - 5.

a critic called her the supreme chronicler of insanity.

Guttridge, Peter. “Obituary: Jennifer Dawson”. The Independent.

Besides her seven novels she published a volume of short stories and collaborated on a children's book.

Milestones

21 January 1929

JD was born in South London, where she also grew up. She was one of five children.

“Contemporary Authors”. Gale Databases: Literature Resource Centre-LRC.

Guttridge, Peter. “Obituary: Jennifer Dawson”. The Independent.

By February 1961

JD published her first and best-known novel, The Ha-Ha, titled from the kind of fence which is sunken in order to make the barrier invisible.

“Contemporary Authors”. Gale Databases: Literature Resource Centre-LRC.

Blain, Virginia, Patricia Clements, and Isobel Grundy, editors. The Feminist Companion to Literature in English: Women Writers from the Middle Ages to the Present. Yale University Press; Batsford, 1990.

Blond, Anthony. “Introduction [to The Ha-Ha]”. They Made Their Name, Anthony Blond, 1968, p. 199.

199

14 October 2000

JD died of cancer at a hospice in Banbury; she showed no fear of death, which she said she preferred to painful, artificially prolonged life.

“Contemporary Authors”. Gale Databases: Literature Resource Centre-LRC.

The Ship. St Anne’s College.

91: 65

Whitby, Joy. “In Memory of Jennifer Hinton (Dawson 1949)”. The Ship, pp. 54 - 5.

Biography

Birth and Background

21 January 1929

JD was born in South London, where she also grew up. She was one of five children.

“Contemporary Authors”. Gale Databases: Literature Resource Centre-LRC.

Guttridge, Peter. “Obituary: Jennifer Dawson”. The Independent.