Joan Aiken Joan Delano Aiken 4 September 1924

Joan Aiken

Joan Delano Aiken (4 September 1924 – 4 January 2004) was an English novelist. Joan Aiken at The Hermitage, Petworth.

She was born in Rye, East Sussex, into a family of writers, including her father, American poet Conrad Aiken, her sister, Jane Aiken Hodge and her brother John Aiken. Conrad Potter Aiken

Joan Aiken She had written stories from an early age, and in her early twenties she had her first stories broadcast by the BBC, where she had been employed in 1942– 43.

Many of her most popular books, including the Wolves Chronicles (also known as The Wolves of Willoughby Chase series), are set in an elaborate alternate history of Britain in which James II is never deposed in the Glorious Revolution, but supporters of the House of Hanover continually agitate against the monarchy. The Wolves of Willoughby Chase Dell Yearling edition

Joan Aiken Jane Austen Her series of children's books about Arabel and Mortimer are illustrated by Quentin Blake. Others are illustrated by Jan Pieńkowski and Pat Marriott.

Her many novels for adults include several that continue or complement novels by Jane Austen. These include Mansfield Revisited and Jane Fairfax.

Joan Aiken produced over a hundred books, including more than a dozen collections of fantasy stories, plays and poems, and modern and historical novels for adults and children.

A number of her books focus on spine-chilling or supernatural events, including The Windscreen Weepers (stories, 1969), The Shadow Guests (novel, 1980), A Whisper in the Night (stories, 1982), and A Creepy Company (stories, 1993, with variant contents in its US and UK editions).

Lamb House James as he appears at the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D. C. She set her adult supernatural novel The Haunting of Lamb House at Lamb House in Rye. This ghost story recounts in fictional form an alleged haunting experienced by two former residents of the house, Henry James and E. F. Benson, both of whom also wrote ghost stories. Aiken's father, Conrad Aiken, also authored a small number of notable ghost stories.