Alan Garner OBE (born 17 October 1934) is an English novelist best known for his children's fantasy novels and his retellings of traditional British folk tales. His work is firmly rooted in the landscape, history and folklore of his native county of Cheshire, North West England, being set in the region and making use of the native Cheshire dialect.Born in Congleton, Garner grew up around the nearby town of Alderley Edge, and spent much of his youth in the wooded area known locally as 'The Edge', where he gained an early interest in the folklore of the region. Studying at Manchester Grammar School and then briefly at Oxford University, in 1957 he moved to the nearby village of Blackden, where he bought and renovated an Early Modern building known as Toad Hall. His first novel, The Weirdstone of Brisingamen, was published in 1960. A children's fantasy novel set on the Edge, it incorporated elements of local folklore in its plot and characters. Garner completed a sequel, The Moon of Gomrath (1963), but left the third book of the trilogy he had envisioned. Instead he produced a string of further fantasy novels, Elidor (1965), The Owl Service (1967) and Red Shift (1973).Turning away from fantasy as a genre, Garner produced The Stone Book Quartet (1979), a series of four short novellas detailing a day in the life of four generations of his family. He also published a series of British folk tales which he had rewritten in a series of books entitled Alan Garner's Fairy Tales of Gold (1979), Alan Garner's Book of British Fairy Tales (1984) and A Bag of Moonshine (1986). In his subsequent novels, Strandloper (1996) and Thursbitch (2003), he continued writing tales revolving around Cheshire, although without the fantasy elements which had characterised his earlier work. In 2012, he finally published a third book in the Weirdstone trilogy, Boneland.
[Owl Service frontispiece, quoting the Radio Times] Possessive parents rarely live long enough to see the consequences of their selfishness.
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If the other fellow can do it, let him.
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"I try to write onions." (on the layeredness of his fiction)
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At home, working his socks off. The main focus is on a)The next novel. b) The development of The Blackden Trust, established by Garner in December 2004, whereby his house and land are dedicated to the purpose, during his lifetime, of assisting 'in the management, preservation, study and care of the historic environment of the property; to foster research in respect of such heritage; to advance the education of the public in the architecture, history and archaeology of the property', and, after his death, 'to assist in the provision of an environment for artistic or academic purposes to those who seek such surroundings to assist them in completing artistic or academic work of merit.' [January 2005]
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Children from first marriage: Adam, Ellen, Katharine; second marriage: Joseph Elizabeth.
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Biography/bibliography in: "Contemporary Authors". New Revision Series, vol. 134, pages 166-170. Farmington Hills, MI: Thomson Gale, 2005.
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After a severe emotional period during the filming of The Owl Service (1969), he was diagnosed with manic depression.
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Has won the Guardian Award, the Carnegie Medal, the Phoenix Award and the Lewis Carroll Shelf Award for his fiction, as well as the Chicago International Film Festival 1st Prize for his educational film "Images."
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He was awarded the O.B.E. (Officer of the Order of the British Empire) in 2001.
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