Jane Brady

Background

Jane was born in 1934, in Cambridge, England, United Kingdom. Her family moved soon afterwards to a remote farmhouse in Norfolk. Her father is a historian and University Lecturer at Downing College, Cambridge.

Education

Jane White was educated at home by a governess until the age of nine, then at a Convent boarding school. At eighteen she won a State Scholarship to Girton College, Cambridge. She read for an honours Degree in English and graduated with an upper second Degree.

Career

Jane worked as an assistant in a large public library for nine months prior to Cambridge College and took various vacation jobs as a waitress - also as general help in a Maternity Hospital. She was employed for five years with the B.B.C. World Service as a News Clerk in the News Information Department.

Jane White has written plays, poetry, verse dramas for as long as she can remember. Critics praised Brady as the writer for her characterizations. The author’s ''insights into the behavior of children are extraordinarily good,'' wrote a reviewer in the Nation, who also praised Brady’s depiction of the boys’ relatives.

Brady wrote her novel Proxy, which was noted by the critics. A reviewer in the Times Literary Supplement wrote in Quarry, Brady “confirms the talent she showed for scene-setting”. Brady’s next novel Beatrice, Falling features a man undergoing a prolonged mental breakdown after the suicide of his wife. Critics compared Beatrice, Falling to Brady’s previous novels and commented on the stylistic similarities among the three. “Necessary as it is for any good novelist to use particular hallmarks, to be a recognizable stylist, these may be dubious assets to so prolific a writer as Miss White,” commented a reviewer in the Times Literary Supplement. The reviewer wrote that Brady establishes “a splendidly straightforward kind of suspense” story but abandons it in favor of creating “a symbolic purgatory for her hero.” A Publishers Weekly reviewer disliked the novel’s protagonist but deemed Beatrice, Falling to be “an intriguing semi-Gothic tale.”

With Retreat in Good Order, Brady returns to character-driven plots. Like some of Brady’s other adolescent characters, here heroine Maria strikes out at those around her in response to her own internal conflicts. Library Journal contributor Jean Drabbe Barnett observed that Retreat in Good Order “is entertaining, although not provocative.” Stuart Hood, writing in the Listener, wrote that the novel “is well-written in a quiet, even style, observant and polished - too polished perhaps.”

Brady’s futuristic Comet: A Novel is set on a world experiencing a nuclear holocaust. A Publishers Weekly contributor reviewing Comet: A Novel warned readers that “you won’t believe a word of it,” while Dan Miller called the novel “fast-moving fiction with dozens of unanswered questions,” in his Booklist review. In Benjamin’s Open Day, Brady again explores the dysfunctional mother-son relationships and violence that she writes about in Quarry and Proxy.

Illness forced her to early retire in 1979.

Achievements

• Jane Brady is primarily known as the author of psychological thrillers using the pseudonym Jane White. Critics compared Brady’s novel Quarry to the classic novel Lord of the Flies by William Golding, because both depict young boys committing violent acts. Her novel, Proxy, received mostly positive reviews in the United Kingdom but was uniformly panned in the United States. Her other famous works: Beatrice Falling, Retreat in Good Order and Left for Dead.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Quarry
  • Proxy
  • Beatrice, Falling
  • Retreat in good order
  • Left for dead

Interests

• theatre-going, films, music of all kinds, and reading

Connections

In 1961 Jane married a lecturer in German at Birkbeck College, London University. They have one son.

Son:

Martin Brady

References

• Contemporary Authors, Vol. 181