Jan Struther

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JS began to write during the 1920s as a contributor of poems and sketches to journals. She also wrote some still-popular hymns, and edited and wrote for children. She hit the jackpot with her Mrs. Miniver series, designed just before the Second World War as a light spot in a newspaper, a representation of young and pleasure-loving femininity. Collected in a volume, reissued in the USA, and finally converted into an entirely different story in a Hollywood film, it achieved wide circulation and notoriety. JS never equalled this success with any subsequent work, though she was a public and private poet and a lively letter-writer until the end of her life.
Black-and-white photo of Jan Struther, 28 June 1946. Wearing a patterned dress, she is sitting on the grass and looking down at a small, leashed dog beside her.

Milestones

6 June 1901

JS was born Joyce Anstruther: she felt herself almost an only child, since her brother and only sibling was seven years older and went to boarding school.
Maxtone Graham, Ysenda. The Real Mrs Miniver. John Murray.
7, 309

August 1918

Seventeen-year-old Joyce Anstruther achieved her first publication (with her mother's help): a poem in the Saturday Westminster Gazette under the pseudonym Jan Struther, which in the end was to replace her name.
Maxtone Graham, Ysenda. The Real Mrs Miniver. John Murray.
20

26 October 1939

JS published in book form Mrs. Miniver, a collection of her sketches from the Times Court Page; publishers had been vying for her since the second piece in the series appeared.
Maxtone Graham, Ysenda. The Real Mrs Miniver. John Murray.
110
Reynolds, David. “Zest”. London Review of Books, pp. 34-5.
34

29 July 1940

The American edition of JS 's Mrs. Miniver appeared, and quickly looked set to outgo the British edition in popularity.
Maxtone Graham, Ysenda. The Real Mrs Miniver. John Murray.
137
Reynolds, David. “Zest”. London Review of Books, pp. 34-5.
34

December 1952

JS , in the lull after her mastectomy, wrote about 18,000 words of a travel book about America which she had been planning for a dozen years, to be called Cactus and Columbine.
Maxtone Graham, Ysenda. The Real Mrs Miniver. John Murray.
296

20 July 1953

JS died in New York of a brain tumour which had followed on her breast cancer.
Maxtone Graham, Ysenda. The Real Mrs Miniver. John Murray.
298

Biography

Birth and Family

6 June 1901

JS was born Joyce Anstruther: she felt herself almost an only child, since her brother and only sibling was seven years older and went to boarding school.
Maxtone Graham, Ysenda. The Real Mrs Miniver. John Murray.
7, 309

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