Edward Gorey's hand is unmistakable in the cover above. The first, British edition was illustrated throughout by Pat Marriott, whose sketchy, almost Phiz-like graphic style has become almost inextricable from Joan Aiken's children's books, new and old. But there's perhaps something even more appropriate about this juxtaposition with the mad, campy, Gothic spirit of Gorey.
As long as I can remember, I've been reading and collecting Aiken's work. Ever since I first entered her strange alternate universe, an early nineteenth-century world situated somewhere between Jane Austen's home counties and Charles Dickens' London, I've felt at home there. As she explains at the opening of the Wolves of Willoughby Chase:
The action of this book takes place in a period of English history that never happened - shortly after the accession to the throne of Good King James III in 1832. At this time, the Channel Tunnel from Dover to Calais having been recently completed, a great many wolves, driven by severe winters, had migrated through the tunnel from Europe and Russia to the British Isles.The Wolves Chronicles, her most famous novel-sequence, could, I suppose, be described as proto-steampunk in its obsession with the backwards view of what might have been the great nineteenth century if only King James hadn't been forced to flee from his kingdom in 1688, leaving no Dutch King William to win the Battle of the Boyne.
However things might have turned out, they would at the very least have been different.
From book to book, setting to setting - colonial America in Night Birds in Nantucket; a mythic version of Wales in the The Whispering Mountain; the imaginary "Roman American" realm of New Cumbria in The Stolen Lake - there's never a pause in the madcap pace of these adventures. More to the point, as the series progressed over the decades, Aiken was able to use her licence to rewrite history to critique not only Victorian laissez-faire industrialism, but also the brutal colonialism of that and other times.
- The Wolves of Willoughby Chase (1962)
- The Wolves of Willoughby Chase. Illustrated by Pat Marriott. 1962. The Wolves Chronicles, 1. A Puffin Book. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1974.
- Black Hearts in Battersea (1964)
- Black Hearts in Battersea. Illustrated by Pat Marriott. 1965. The Wolves Chronicles, 2. A Puffin Book. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1975.
- Nightbirds on Nantucket (1966)
- Night Birds on Nantucket. Illustrated by Pat Marriott. 1966. The Wolves Chronicles, 3. A Puffin Book. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1977.
- The Whispering Mountain (1968)
- The Whispering Mountain. Illustrated by Pat Marriott. 1968. The Wolves Chronicles, 4. A Puffin Book. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1978.
- The Stolen Lake (1981)
- The Stolen Lake. Illustrated by Pat Marriott. 1981. The Wolves Chronicles, 5. A Puffin Book. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1983.
- Limbo Lodge [aka "Dangerous Games"] (1999)
- Limbo Lodge. 1999. The Wolves Chronicles, 6. London: Red Fox, 2000.
- The Cuckoo Tree (1971)
- The Cuckoo Tree. Illustrated by Pat Marriott. 1971. The Wolves Chronicles, 7. A Puffin Book. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1973.
- Dido and Pa (1986)
- Dido and Pa. Illustrated by Pat Marriott. 1986. The Wolves Chronicles, 8. London: Red Fox, 1992.
- Midnight is a Place (1974)
- Midnight is a Place. Illustrated by Pat Marriott. 1974. The Wolves Chronicles, 9. A Puffin Book. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1986.
- Is [aka: Is Underground] (1992)
- Is. Illustrated by Pat Marriott. 1992. The Wolves Chronicles, 10. London: Red Fox, 1993.
- Cold Shoulder Road (1995)
- Cold Shoulder Road. 1995. The Wolves Chronicles, 11. London: Red Fox, 1996.
- Midwinter Nightingale (2003)
- Midwinter Nightingale. The Wolves Chronicles, 12. New York: Delacorte Press, 2003.
- The Witch of Clatteringshaws (2005)
- The Witch of Clatteringshaws. 2005. The Wolves Chronicles, 13. A Yearling Book. New York: Random House Children's Books, 2006.
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The Wolves Chronicles
[in - approximate - sequential order]:
Joan Aiken: The Wolves of Willoughby Chase (1962)This book, the first to be written, is still the most popular for many readers. It's quite restrained by the standards of what was to come from the depths of Aiken's imagination, but that early scene with a prissy young girl being threatened by wolves in a railway carriage has remained in my memory long after the rest of its somewhat melodramatic plot has faded. Evil governesses, haunted mansions, oppressive orphanages, and the constant threat of lethal violence from human and animal alike all feature as motifs in the story, though not nearly in as fully developed a form as they would eventually attain in the later volumes.
The fact that in Aiken's world the Protestant "glorious revolution" of 1688 clearly never took place opens up all sorts of plot possibilities. The second book in her roman-fleuve, Black Hearts in Battersea, concerns a cabal of Hanoverian revolutionaries in London, plotting to bring over Bonnie Prince George, the "true" heir to the throne. There are air balloons, bomb-plots, and missing heirs a-plenty. Simon, the ostensible hero, introduced as a mysterious wild boy in The Wolves of Willoughby Chase, turns out (unsurprisingly) to be of noble birth - as well as a dab hand at painting. More to the point, it's this book which introduces the true protagonist of the series, the cheeky and endlessly resourceful Dido Twite.
Shifting the scene to America, and providing Dido Twite - missing, presumed drowned, at the end of the previous book - with a ten-month period of hibernation on a whaling ship, provides Aiken with scope to introduce even more material from her stock of nineteenth-century fictional tropes. Moby-Dick is firmly in her cross-hairs (though this time the whale is pink - and friendly), but so is the giant gun from Jules Verne's From the Earth to the Moon. Aiken's cannon is pointed at London, however, and threatens not only to end the Stuart dynasty but - even worse - to propel the island of Nantucket onto the Jersey Shore!
Though often described as hors-série, given that The Whispering Mountain concerns the doings of Owen Hughes, son of Captain Hughes of the Thrush, the ship which transports Dido Twite from Nantucket to England, it seems only proper to place it here, fourth in the series as well as in order of publication. It can also be seen as the moment when Aiken's somewhat chaotic mélange of styles finally begins to come into balance. Ancient Welsh legends and Bardic lore combine with a race of mysterious dwarfs from Central Asia to tip us from one crisis to another. Only the courage and never-say-die attitude of Owen Hughes and his friend Arabis can save the Harp of Teirtu from the machinations of the callous Marquess of Malyn. It's no surprise that, as well as winning the Guardian Children's Fiction Prize, this book was a runner-up for the Carnegie Medal.
Twite's long - and frequently interrupted - voyage home to Britain after her sojourn on Nantucket allowed Aiken scope to "follow Dido Twite around the world." The first of these interludes, The Stolen Lake, is:set in an imaginary South American country near Hy Brasil, where a Lost Race civilization is nearing meltdown due to the insatiable demands of its ruler, Queen Ginevra (i.e. Guinevere), who has been drinking the blood of virgins to maintain her Immortality; but the coming of King Arthur returns the tale to ethical normalcy.This complex tale resembles The Whispering Mountain in many ways, but the unabashedly supernatural nature of many of the events shows a certain shift in the tone of the series. What Aiken once played largely for laughs has now become rather more serious.- John Clute, "Joan Aiken." Encyclopedia of Science Fiction
I suppose I had assumed that Aiken's "Wolves" stories might begin to lose their focus as the decades went by, given her creator's decision to leave Dido Twite still caught in essentially the same net of improbabilities that entangled her in the 60s and 70s. Nothing could be further from the truth. It's hard to avoid the suspicion that Aiken had been reading Ursula Le Guin's 1972 Vietnam parable The Word for World is Forest before venturing into the dark thickets of Limbo Lodge. In some ways this is my favourite of all of her works. Her detestation of the gloomy practices and ideologies of colonialism is spiced with a fascinated exploration of the complex world of the forests of Aratu, island of the Pearl Snakes. The references to "Angria," the Brontës' imaginary kingdom in Africa add piquancy to the usual Aikenian phantasmagoria.
So, to make a long story short, Dido Twite appears to have left Nantucket on the English sloop Thrush, commanded by the "lively, imperturbable" Captain Osbaldeston, who (now styled Osbaldestone with an 'e') was succeeded in Bermuda by the "tall, stern" Captain Hughes (father of Owen, the hero of The Whispering Mountain) who, in his turn, was ordered to set sail for South America, then on to the Pacific in pursuit of the errant Lord Herodsfoot; she then took a side-trip on the Siwara to the island of Aratu, then rejoined the Thrush for the long voyage home to England with the now badly wounded Captain Hughes. Dido seems as imperturbable as ever when confronted by Highwaymen on the road back to London, however. Nor can witches, missing heirs, and hallucinogenic nuts prevent her from once again saving the day for the new king, Richard the IVth.
This book follows hard on the heels of The Cuckoo Tree. In fact, it begins with the conversation between Simon (now 6th Duke of Battersea) and Dido Twite intimated at the end of the previous book. For anyone weary of Hanoverian plotters, it comes as a bit of a relief to hear of the death of "Bonnie Prince Georgie" over the sea in Germany. Unfortunately he has a successor in the even more ruthless Margrave Wolfgang von Eisengrim, first cousin to the Pretender. A Prisoner of Zenda-like plot follows, with the attempted fabrication of a gullible double for the newly crowned King Richard, and a series of grim and violent adventures, with an even higher body count than usual. It's good to have roving packs of wolves back in the limelight, and particularly pleasing when they devour Dido's callous and duplicitous father Abednego Twite (whose music, it is hinted, may nevertheless survive him). Once again virtue triumphs - but only just ...
Like The Whispering Mountain, this book is generally considered hors-série. If it's to be placed anywhere in the sequence, though, it probably has to be here. It's set (for the most part) mostly in the Dickensian industrial town of Blastburn, which played a similar role in The Wolves of Willoughby Chase. We're also given a precise date for once: Lucas Bell's first diary entry is dated 1842. Towards the end of the book Murgatroyd's mill has been bought by Lady Murgatroyd's cousin Lord Holdernesse, who seems to be promising a new era of fairness and justice in its appalling confines. It's certainly a very spirited tale, with a good deal of interesting information about Victorian mudlarks and the whole economic machinery of generating cash from scraps and refuse - a process explored more symbolically in Dickens's Our Mutual Friend.
Is ... is set at a time when the north of England has seceded from the south, and a grim gradgrind Dystopia feeds (almost literally) on duped children to fuel its industrial mania.What Clute describes as the "Steampunk atmosphere of this tale" perhaps explains Aiken's choice of Is, Dido's younger sister, first introduced (under the name of "slut") as a lowly, starved servant girl in Dido and Pa, as a more appropriate protagonist than her increasingly high-toned sister. It must come after Midnight is a Place, as its principal setting, Blastburn, "has had its name changed to Holdernesse" [p.34], and Lord Holdernesse was just beginning to buy up the area at the end of the previous book. Since then, however, the whole town has been moved underground, and only the ruins of the old order are left outside its grim gates. With a combination of telepathy, grit, and guile, Is manages to upset the plans of her uncle, Roy Twite (otherwise known as "Gold Kingy"), find her missing cousin Arun, but not, unfortunately, his friend Davie Stuart, the heir to the throne, who died in one of the blast furnaces of the new order. The tidings of his death are so shocking to his father, King Richard, that he promptly dies, leaving the throne to descend to his cousin Simon, Duke of Battersea.- John Clute, "Joan Aiken." Encyclopedia of Science Fiction
Cold Shoulder Road follows straight on from Is. The two cousins, Is and Arun, have gone south in search of the latter's mother, and are promptly swept up in a conspiracy to smuggle goods through the Channel Tunnel by a group called the Merry Gentry. Is's abilities as a telepath, developed during his servitude in the mines in the previous book, are one of the few cards LOMAK [the League of Mothers and Kids] have to play in their struggle against all this negative male energy. Truth and justice do eventually prevail, but at a fearful cost in lost lives.
Some useful details about Aiken's alternative history were revealed in the previous book: for instance, the fact that Charles I was beheaded in this timeline, too, despite his wife Henrietta Maria's attempts to bolster the cause with a ship full of treasure. Midwinter Nightingale is equally informative about the early days of King Richard IV's reign: for instance, that his son Davie Stuart (who died in the north in Is) was the result of an earlier marriage. His new wife, Adelaide, also has children from a previous union (though this was concealed from the King), a fact which provides the narrative impetus for this new story, which runs more or less in parallel with Cold Shoulder Road above. Dido is her usual resourceful self, though this time she has werewolves to contend with rather as well as the more common would-be usurpers.
The dynastic and social details in this, Aiken's final book, have begun to mount up into a kind of anarchy of warring nations and plotters. The scene has shifted to Scotland, however, which gives her scope for even more experiments with the local vernacular. Short though it is, it contains enough plot for a much longer novel. The witch herself, and her gossipy letters to her various cousins, are perhaps its strongest point. Beyond that, it's clear that even with a new king on the throne - not Simon, who's mercifully been spared the burden - that there'll never be peace in the British Isles at this rate. If a little less than an entirely satisfying conclusion to so long and baroque a narrative odyssey, The Witch of Clatteringshaws is a fine book in itself: though possibly intended for slightly younger readers than some of the earlier titles in the series.
To say that the timeline of these books is a bit confusing would be to put it mildly. In the first of them, The Wolves of Willoughby Chase (1962), it's stated that the action "takes place ... shortly after the accession to the throne of Good King James III in 1832."
The next clear set of dates are given at the beginning of Dido and Pa (1986), where the updated "family tree of the Dukes of Battersea" gives 1818 as the birthdates for Simon, the 6th Duke, and his twin sister Sophie. It also gives 1840 as the date of the death of the 5th Duke. However, partway through the same book, Sophie states "Next year when I am eighteen ... my money comes out of trust and the lawyers can't stop me using it." [p.262].
There are various problems here. For a start, if the action of Dido and Pa is taking place in 1835 [1818 + 17 for Simon & Sophie's coming of age "next year"], then that means that "Good King James" only reigned for three years, 1832-35. This doesn't seem to fit in very well with the numerous contextual references to the "old King" and his long reign. Above all, it can't be reconciled with the 5th Duke's, Simon's "Uncle William," having "died of the quinsy last winter" [p.11] - i.e. 1834-35. Yet his death date is clearly given as 1840 in the Battersea family tree.
Midnight is a Place is also firmly dated to 1842 by a note in Lucas Bell's diary. So presumably this is meant to be a little later in the reign of Richard IV - or "Davie Jamie Charlie Neddie Georgie Harry Dick Tudor-Stuart" - heir to the throne in The Whispering Mountain (1968), and crowned at the end of The Cuckoo Tree (1971). He dies of grief at the news of the loss of his son and heir Prince Davie at the end of Is (1992), leaving his cousin Simon to take the throne as King Simon the First.
It's hard to see how any of these royal personages can be reconciled with the actual "Old Pretender" James III (1688-1766), or his son Charles III, "Bonnie Prince Charlie" (1720-1788). James II must presumably have continued his reign long after 1688 (he did, after all, live in exile in our own universe until 1701), and must have been succeeded by various "Tudor-Stuart" kings not named James or Richard - though there could certainly have been a few extra Charleses (perhaps four, to match the four Georges?) to bring us all the way to the 1830s. But there's a rather disconcerting aside on p.123 of The Stolen Lake (1981), where King Arthur's wife Queen Ginevra is described as having "very little chin ... like Queen Victoria." So perhaps the latter, too, needs to be folded back into the succession somehow: perhaps as a wife rather than a reigning monarch?
The opening of the Channel Tunnel also seems to shift around in time. It's stated to have recently taken place at the beginning of The Wolves of Willoughby Chase, but Arun says, at the beginning of Cold Shoulder Road (1995), "They were still digging it when I ran away from home" [p.2], which is confirmed, in context, to be no more than "five years agone". We're still very much in the era of the original Wolves novel, it would appear, despite all these changes of monarch and scene ...
Clearly Joan Aiken wasn't one of those Emily Brontë-like authors who plot out their timelines with precision in an almanac before sitting down to write. On the contrary, she scattered round dates and dynasties with the careless profusion of an Arthur Conan Doyle, whose "Sherlock Holmes" chronology has baffled experts for well over a century. Nevertheless, I'd like to start the ball rolling with something along the following lines:
A Tentative Wolves Timeline:
[firm dates / conjectured dates]
- 1818 - Hanoverian wars / Simon & Sophie born
- 1820 - accession of James III to the throne (wrongly dated to 1832)
- 1830 - opening of the Channel Tunnel
- 1832 - events of The Wolves of Willoughby Chase
- 1833 - events of Black Hearts in Battersea
- 1833 - Dido Twite's ten-month coma aboard a whaling ship
- 1834 - events of Night Birds on Nantucket
- 1834 - events of The Whispering Mountain
- 1834 - Dido Twite starts her voyage home on the Thrush
- 1834 - events of The Stolen Lake in South America
- 1834 - events of Limbo Lodge in the Pacific
- 1834 - Death of William, Duke of Battersea (wrongly dated to 1840)
- 1835 - Dido Twite returns to England on the Thrush
- 1835 - events of The Cuckoo Tree / Coronation of Richard IV
- 1835 - events of Dido and Pa in London
- late 1830s - secession of the North, East and West from the rest of England
- 1842 - events of Midnight is a Place in Blastburn
- 1843 - events of Is in Holdernesse (the new name for Blastburn)
- 1843 - events of Cold Shoulder Road / Accession of Simon I
- 1843 - events of Midwinter Nightingale
- 1844 - events of The Witch of Clatteringshaws / Accession of Piers Ivanhoe le Guichet Crackenthorpe (aka "Woodlouse" or "Cracky Billy") to the throne of England
One of Aiken's daughters lives in an old pub nearby - she had to sign a paper saying she wouldn't sell liquor to her guests.This comment comes in a letter where Bishop is extolling to Lowell the homely atmosphere of the England she's just been visiting: "exactly like being in the pages of a Beatrix Potter book ... all the individual well-known animals, the rabbits playing at evening, all the old characters around."- Elizabeth Bishop to Robert Lowell (July 30th, 1964)
Everything so minute, and built of flints - looking like soiled ancient hail-stones, to me. But you probably have seen all this long ago.Bishop's reference to "Aiken" is (of course) to the poet Conrad Aiken (1889-1973), Joan Aiken's father, now largely forgotten but once a bit of an up-and-comer in the modern poetry stakes, a classmate of T. S. Eliot's at Harvard, and author of Earth Triumphant (1914), along with many other collections of semi-traditional verse.- Words in Air (2008): 545
Aiken married [Canadian poet] Jessie MacDonald in 1912, and the couple moved to England in 1921 with their older two children; John (born 1913) and Jane (born 1917), settling in Rye, East Sussex (where the American novelist Henry James had once lived). The couple's youngest daughter, Joan, was born in Rye in 1924. Conrad Aiken returned to Cambridge, Massachusetts, as a tutor at Harvard from 1927 to 1928.The couple divorced in 1929. All three of their children became writers, John as a SF writer and editor, Jane Aiken Hodge as a novelist, and Joan as a novelist and children's writer.
This rather checkered heritage does, however, offer certain clues to the distinctly transatlantic flavour of much of the latter's writing. Though born in the English Home Counties, she never seemed quite native to the place - she sounded more like a writer-in-residence than a born-and-bred insider.
Perhaps that's what appealed to me so much about her when I first read her work as a child. She didn't seem to belong - an important attribute for all us deracinated colonials, scattered across the globe by the imperial whims of our forebears.
I remember once, in some anthology in the School Library, running across a story by Joan Aiken about the discovery of a lost play by Shakespeare - a version of "Robin Hood", no less - which came to light in a lumber room and was sold to prevent the demolition of the old stately home it was in. This story delighted me greatly - especially the pieces of incidental pastiche she quoted from "The Tragicall Historie of Robin Hoode."
Act I, Scene I. Sherwood Forest. Enter John Lackland, De Bracy, Sheriff of Nottingham, Knights, Lackeys and attendants.I looked for it in vain in the rather po-faced pages of the collection pictured above, Shakespeare Stories, full of rather contorted tales-obliquely-invoking-the-Bard by what was then, half a century ago, considered the cream of the British literary establishment.
John L.Good sirs, the occasion of our coming hither
Is, since our worthy brother Coeur de Lion
Far from our isle now wars on Paynim soil,
The apprehension of that recreant knave
Most caitiff outlaw who is known by some
As Robin Locksley; by others Robin Hood;
More, since our coffers gape with idle locks
The forfeiture of his ill-gotten gains.
Thus Locksley's stocks will stock our locks enow
While he treats air beneath the forest bough. ...
I did eventually locate it, though, as "A Room full of Leaves", right at the back of her early book All But a Few. It was worth ten of any of the efforts in the more official volume (though one or two of them weren't so bad, either).
She didn't quite fit - and that was her charm. She wasn't high culture, but she wasn't simply a children's writer, either: there was, after all, that Henry James connection. She even wrote a novel about him:
The Haunting of Lamb House ... set in the actual Lamb House in Rye, exposes two of its real-life inhabitants – Henry James ... and E. F. Benson – to the ghost of an eighteenth-century child who has had to endure the breakup of his family.Perhaps it did all have something to do with the strange, haunted restlessness of her father Conrad. It's not as if it was unmotivated:
On February 27, 1901, [Conrad's father] William Ford Aiken murdered his wife and then committed suicide. According to his 1952 autobiography, Ushant, Aiken, then 11 years old, heard the two gunshots and discovered the bodies immediately thereafter.
... Though Aiken was reluctant to speak of his early trauma and ensuing psychological problems, he acknowledged that his writings were strongly influenced by his studies of Sigmund Freud, Carl G. Jung, Otto Rank, Ferenczi, Adler, and other depth psychologists. It was not until the publication of his autobiography ... that Aiken revealed the emotional challenges that he had battled for much of his adult life.
It's hard to know just what effect these revelations had on his children. Fortunately by then Joan had already begun to carve out her own career as a writer:
Writing stories from an early age, she finished her first full-length novel when she was sixteen and had her first short story for adults accepted for publication when she was seventeen. In 1941 her first children's story was broadcast on the BBC's Children's Hour.
Aiken worked for the United Nations Information Centre (UNIC) in London between 1943 and 1949. In September 1945 she married Ronald George Brown, a journalist who was also working at UNIC. They had two children before he died in 1955.
After her husband's death, Aiken joined the magazine Argosy, where she worked in various editorial capacities and, she later said, learned her trade as a writer. The magazine was one of many in which she published short stories between 1955 and 1960. During this time she also published her first two collections of children's stories and began work on a children's novel, initially titled Bonnie Green, which was later published in 1962 as The Wolves of Willoughby Chase. By then she was able to write full-time from home, producing two or three books a year for the rest of her life ...Whatever the motivations behind it, Joan Aiken's writing is a joy. I'd feared, when starting to reread it in preparation for this post, that the enchantment might have worn off since I first encountered it. But it doesn't seem at all pinchbeck to me. Maybe you had to be there, but for the bookish child of today, I suspect she could still be a shining star.
Perhaps that great enthusiast John Clute puts it best, in his SFE article:
Throughout her career Aiken generated work of an almost relentless fertility. There is a passionate knowingness in her invention of small details that is clearly a matter of her own satisfaction – few young readers would know, for instance, that the "hobey" played by Dido Twite's father is an oboe, the French hautbois having, in this world, been differently Englished. Her feverishness may derive to some degree from the example of her father, though she maintained strict professional control over even the most exuberant moments; the loving urgency of her depiction of character and landscape and plot seemed an intrinsic gift.Peace to her ashes. But then, like all true writers, she can't really be said to be dead. Her work will certainly survive her.
Joan Aiken & family in their caravan (1951)
l-to-r: Joan Aiken, Taffy the cat, John & Elizabeth, Ron Brown
l-to-r: Joan Aiken, Taffy the cat, John & Elizabeth, Ron Brown
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Novels:
- The Smile of the Stranger (1978)
- The Lightning Tree [aka "The Weeping Ash"] (1980)
- The Young Lady from Paris [aka "The Girl from Paris"] (1982)
- Mansfield Revisited (1984)
- Jane Fairfax: The Secret Story of the Second Heroine in Jane Austen's Emma (1990)
- Eliza’s Daughter (1994)
- Emma Watson: The Watsons Completed (1996)
- The Youngest Miss Ward (1998)
- Lady Catherine's Necklace (2000)
- The Silence of Herondale (1964)
- The Fortune Hunters (1965)
- Trouble With Product X [aka "Beware of the Bouquet"] (1966)
- Hate Begins at Home [aka "Dark Interval"] (1967)
- The Ribs of Death [aka "The Crystal Crow"] (1967)
- The Embroidered Sunset (1970)
- The Butterfly Picnic [aka "Cluster of Separate Sparks"] (1972)
- Died On A Rainy Sunday (1972)
- Voices in an Empty House (1975)
- Castle Barebane (1976)
- The Five-Minute Marriage (1977)
- Last Movement (1977)
- Foul Matter (1983)
- Deception [aka "If I were You"] (1987)
- The Haunting of Lamb House (1987)
- Blackground (1989)
- Morningquest (1992)
- The Wolves of Willoughby Chase (1962)
- The Wolves of Willoughby Chase. Illustrated by Pat Marriott. 1962. The Wolves Chronicles, 1. A Puffin Book. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1974.
- Black Hearts in Battersea (1964)
- Black Hearts in Battersea. Illustrated by Pat Marriott. 1965. The Wolves Chronicles, 2. A Puffin Book. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1975.
- Nightbirds on Nantucket (1966)
- Night Birds on Nantucket. Illustrated by Pat Marriott. 1966. The Wolves Chronicles, 3. A Puffin Book. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1977.
- The Whispering Mountain (1968)
- The Whispering Mountain. Illustrated by Pat Marriott. The Wolves Chronicles: prequel. 1968. A Puffin Book. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1978.
- The Cuckoo Tree (1971)
- The Cuckoo Tree. Illustrated by Pat Marriott. 1971. The Wolves Chronicles, 6. A Puffin Book. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1973.
- Midnight is a Place (1974)
- Midnight is a Place. Illustrated by Pat Marriott. The Wolves Chronicles: outlier. 1974. A Puffin Book. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1986.
- The Stolen Lake (1981)
- The Stolen Lake. Illustrated by Pat Marriott. 1981. The Wolves Chronicles, 4. A Puffin Book. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1983.
- Dido and Pa (1986)
- Dido and Pa. Illustrated by Pat Marriott. 1986. The Wolves Chronicles, 7. London: Red Fox, 1992.
- Is [aka: Is Underground] (1992)
- Is. Illustrated by Pat Marriott. 1992. The Wolves Chronicles, 8. London: Red Fox, 1993.
- Cold Shoulder Road (1995)
- Cold Shoulder Road. 1995. The Wolves Chronicles, 9. London: Red Fox, 1996.
- Limbo Lodge [aka "Dangerous Games"] (1999)
- Limbo Lodge. 1999. The Wolves Chronicles, 5. London: Red Fox, 2000.
- Midwinter Nightingale (2003)
- Midwinter Nightingale. The Wolves Chronicles, 10. New York: Delacorte Press, 2003.
- The Witch of Clatteringshaws (2005)
- The Witch of Clatteringshaws. 2005. The Wolves Chronicles, 11. A Yearling Book. New York: Random House Children's Books, 2006.
- Arabel's Raven (1972)
- Escaped Black Mamba (1973)
- The Bread Bin (1974)
- Mortimer's Tie (1976)
- Mortimer and the Sword Excalibur (1979)
- The Spiral Stair (1979)
- The Mystery of Mr Jones's Disappearing Taxi (1982)
- Mortimer's Portrait on Glass (1982)
- Mortimer's Cross (1983)
- Mortimer Says Nothing [stories] (1985)
- Arabel and Mortimer (1992)
- Mortimer's Mine (1994)
- Mayhem in Rumbury (1995)
- Go Saddle the Sea (1978)
- Go Saddle the Sea. Illustrated by Pat Marriott. 1978. A Puffin Book. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1983.
- Bridle the Wind (1983)
- Bridle the Wind. Illustrated by Pat Marriott. 1983. A Puffin Book. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1986.
- The Teeth of the Gale (1988)
- The Teeth of the Gale. Illustrated by Pat Marriott. 1988. A Puffin Book. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1990.
- In Thunder's Pocket. Illustrated by Caroline Crossland (2000)
- The Song of Mat and Ben. Illustrated by Caroline Crossland (2000)
- Bone and Dream. Illustrated by Caroline Crossland (2002)
- The Kingdom and the Cave (1960)
- Night Fall (1969)
- The Shadow Guests (1980)
- The Shadow Guests. 1980. A Puffin Book. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1982.
- The Erl King’s Daughter. Illustrated by Paul Warren (1988)
- Voices [aka "Return to Harken House"] (1988)
- Voices. Hauntings, 3. London: Hippo Books, 1988.
- The Shoemaker’s Boy (1991)
- The Midnight Moropus (1993)
- The Cockatrice Boys (1996)
- The Jewel Seed (1997)
- The Scream (2001)
- All You've Ever Wanted and Other Stories (1953)
- Selected in: All But a Few. Illustrated by Pat Marriott. 1953, 1955, 1971. A Puffin Book. 1974. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1978.
- More Than You Bargained For and Other Stories (1955)
- Selected in: All But a Few. Illustrated by Pat Marriott. 1953, 1955, 1971. A Puffin Book. 1974. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1978.
- Armitage, Armitage, Fly Away Home (1968)
- A Small Pinch of Weather and Other Stories (1969)
- The Windscreen Weepers (1969)
- Smoke from Cromwell's Time and Other Stories (1970)
- All and More (1971)
- Selected in: All But a Few. Illustrated by Pat Marriott. 1953, 1955, 1971. A Puffin Book. 1974. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1978.
- The Green Flash (1971)
- A Harp of Fishbones (1972)
- A Harp of Fishbones and Other Stories. Illustrated by Pat Marriott. 1972. A Puffin Book. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1975.
- All But a Few [aka "Not What You Expected"] (1974)
- All But a Few. Illustrated by Pat Marriott. 1953, 1955, 1971. A Puffin Book. 1974. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1978.
- A Bundle of Nerves (1976)
- A Bundle of Nerves: Stories of Horror, Suspense & Fantasy. 1976. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1978.
- The Faithless Lollybird and Other Stories (1977)
- The Far Forests (1977)
- A Touch of Chill (1979)
- A Touch of Chill: Tales for Sleepless Nights (1980)
- Up the Chimney Down (1984)
- A Goose on Your Grave (1987)
- Deception [aka "If I Were You"] (1988)
- Return to Harken House (1988)
- A Foot in the Grave (1989)
- Give Yourself a Fright (1989)
- Shadows & Moonshine (1990)
- A Fit of Shivers (1990)
- The Winter Sleepwalker. Illustrated by Quentin Blake (1991)
- A Creepy Company (1993)
- A Creepy Company. 1993. A Puffin Book. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1995.
- A Handful of Gold. Illustrated by Quentin Blake (1995)
- Dead Man's Lane (1995)
- Included in: A Creepy Company. 1993. A Puffin Book. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1995.
- Moon Cake and Other Stories (1998)
- Ghostly Beasts (2002)
- Snow Horse and Other Stories (2004)
- Serial Garden: The Complete Armitage Family Stories [Virago Modern Classics] (2008)
- The Monkey's Wedding and Other Stories (2011)
- The Gift Giving [Virago Modern Classics]. Illustrated by Peter Bailey (2016)
- The People in the Castle: Selected Strange Stories (2016)
- Stoneywish and Other Chilling Stories (2020)
- A Ghostly Gallery and Fantastic Fables [E-book]. Cover illustration by Pat Marriott (2023)
- Siren Stories & Weather Witches and Wise Women [E-book]. Cover illustration by Pat Marriott (2023)
- Tales of London Town. Illustrated by Annabel Pearl (2024)
- A Necklace of Raindrops (1968)
- A Necklace of Raindrops and Other Stories. Pictures by Jan Pienkowski. 1968. A Puffin Book. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1978.
- The Kingdom Under the Sea and Other Stories (1971)
- The Kingdom Under the Sea and Other Stories. Pictures by Jan Pienkowski. 1971. A Puffin Book. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1974.
- Mice and Mendelson. Illustrated by Babette Cole (1974)
- Tale of a One-Way Street. Illustrated by Jan Pienkowski (1978)
- The Kitchen Warriors (1983)
- Fog Hounds Wind Cat Sea Mice [aka "Fog Hounds and Other Stories"] (1984)
- The Last Slice of Rainbow and Other Stories (1985)
- Past Eight O'Clock. Illustrated by Jan Pienkowski (1986)
- The Moon's Revenge. Illustrated by Alan Lee (1986)
- Helena and the Wild Man [Oxford Reader] (2000)
- Serve Me Stefan [Oxford Reader] (2000)
- Wise Girl [Oxford Reader] (2000)
- Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Illustrated by Belinda Downes (2002)
- The Wooden Dragon. Illustrated by Bee Willey (2004)
- Winterthing & The Mooncusser’s Daughter (1972 & 1973)
- Winterthing & The Mooncusser’s Daughter: Two Plays for Children. Music by John Sebastian Brown. 1972 & 1973. A Puffin Book. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1975.
- Street (1978)
- The Tinker’s Curse (1978)
- Moon Mill (1982)
- Hatching Trouble (BBC: 1991)
- The Skin Spinners (1976)
- The Way to Write for Children (1982)
- [with John and Jane Aiken Hodge] Conrad Aiken Remembered (1989)
- The Angel Inn [Translated from the Comtesse de Segur] (1976)
The Paget family (1978-82):
"Jane Austen" novels (1984-2000):
Miscellaneous:
Children's Books:
Wolves Chronicles (1962-2005):
Arabel and Mortimer (1972-95):
The Felix trilogy (1978-88):
St Ives Series (2000-02):
Miscellaneous novels:
Stories:
Picture Books:
Plays:
Poetry:
Non-fiction:
Translation:
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