Sources: The Official Diana Wynne Jones Web Site, The Official English Howl's
Moving Castle Web Site (see links here)
DIANA WYNNE JONES was born is London in 1934, where she had a unsettled
childhood with the backnoise of World War II. Her family moved around a lot and finally settled down in a small village in
Essex. It was here that she was deprived of books by a father who "could beat Scrooge in a meanness contest", she decided
to write her own books to make up for it. She went on to study English at Oxford University, where she attended lectures of
both C.S Lewis and J.R.R Tolkien. It was at Oxford where she met her future husband, John Burrow. They married in 1956 and
they now live in Bristol, where he was Professor of Early English Literature at the Univercity there. Together they have
three sons.
Changeover was her first book ever, published in the 60's. It was written for adults and
has nothing to do with the fantasy tales she would later write for us. However, it's still a Jones story that you'll always
remember, taking a light and entertaining look at a serious subject. Her first children's book was Wikin's Tooth,
published in 1973. Since then, she has written over 40 children's books (including the famous Chrestomanci Series
and of course, Howl's Moving Castle) and they have been translated into nearly 17 different languages. Diana Wynne
Jones is often described as 'hotter then Potter', she is truely the Queen of Fantasy, even over J.K Rowling.
Now with the popular forever-read-able Howl's Moving Castle being turned into a great Japanese
Animation by award winning animator and director, Hayo Miyazaki, she is as ppular as ever and is surely the envy of the author's
world.
