Janet Frame¿s literary career was inextricably woven into the fabric of the twentieth-century
New Zealand literary scene. However she also became New Zealand¿s best-known international
writer and her great literary influence in both fields has not been charted before now. This
study also seeks to redress the excessive commitment in scholarship to maintaining even
celebrating Frame¿s reputation as a psychologically disturbed writer. This book surveys all
aspects of Janet Frame¿s biographical legend by considering her later literary and
autobiographical works Jane Campion¿s film adaptation of the autobiographies An Angel at my
Table as well as biographies and literary histories that both rely on and contribute to her
well-known legend. In doing so the author hopes to offer novel perspectives on Frame¿s
literary production on Frame scholarship on auto biographical theories and on New Zealand
literary history.
