Background

Pauline Gedge was born on December 11, 1945 in Auckland, New Zealand, the first of three girls in the family. Six years later her family emigrated to England where her father, an ex-policeman, wanted to study for the Anglican ministry.

Her family lived in an ancient and very dilapidated cottage in the heart of the English Buckinghamshire woodland, and later in a small village in Oxfordshire called Great Haseley.

Pauline grew up surrounded by countryside that she observed, played in, and grew to know and love passionately, and she wrote lyrically of its many moods.

Education

Pauline Gedge attended what was then the Oxford Central School for Girls. She was a very good student in everything but mathematics. Besides, she liked chemistry, because she was allowed to play with pretty crystals and chemicals that behaved as if they had magic in them.

In addition, Pauline studied the violin, an instrument she struggled over and gave up after two years, and the piano, which she enjoyed and continue to play, along with the recorders. Music has always been important to her.

In 1959 her family left for Canada. Pauline Gedge studied at the University of Manitoba from 1961 to 1962 and at the Teachers’ Training College (now the University of Otago College of Education) in Dunedin, New Zealand in 1964.

Career

Pauline Gedge worked at a daycare in Edmonton in 1966. By 1972 she had moved east of Edmonton to the village of Edgerton. She wrote unpublished poetry for years. She tried to write contemporary mainstream fiction in the early 1970s and then gave up, turning to ancient Egypt for inspiration. She based her first published novel, Child of the Morning, on the historical figure of Hatshepsut, Egypt’s only female pharaoh. She wrote the novel in six weeks and entered it in the Alberta Search-for-a-New-Novelist Competition.

In 1978 Gedge published another historical novel, set this time in Roman Britain, called The Eagle and the Raven. Three years later, in 1981, she published her first fantasy novel, Stargate, and was finally able to tour Egypt.

In 1984 she returned to Egypt, and published The Twelfth Transforming. Two years later Gedge left the country and took a house near Edmonton so her sons could finish their schooling in better academic conditions. She was constantly homesick and to her horror her writing dried up.

In 1990 Pauline Gedge moved back to Edgerton and at once the urge to write returned. She wrote Scroll of Saqqara during this time, but the next year she came back to Edmonton so her husband could attend college. He hated both the city and the college, but she published another novel, The Covenant, her attempt at gothic horror. They left for Edgerton in 1993, this time for good, and the next year Gedge wrote House of Dreams.

Currently, Pauline Gedge lives in Edgerton.

Achievements

• Pauline Gedge is best known for her historical fiction novels. She won the Alberta Search-for-a-New Novelist Competition in 1977 for first published novel "Child of the Morning".
  
  Besides, "The Eagle and the Raven" received the Jean Boujassy award from the Société des Gens de Lettres in France in 1978 and "The Twelfth Transforming" won the Writers Guild of Alberta Best Novel of the Year Award in 1985.
  
  

Works

More photos

• book

  • The Horus Road

    (Ahmose, the youngest son of Seqenenra Tao, assumes comman...)

    2000
  • The Eagle and the Raven

    (Spanning three generations, this historical novel tells t...)

    1978
  • Child of the Morning

    (Based closely on historical events, this sensuously beaut...)

    1977
  • The Twelfth Transforming

    (In The Twelfth Transforming, Pauline Gedge returns to anc...)

    1984
  • House of Illusions

    (For many years, Thu has lived in exile, writing the tragi...)

    1996
  • The Hippopotamus Marsh

    (A novel based around the end of Hyksos domination of Egyp...)

    1998
  • Scroll of Saqqara

    (Richly detailed with the exotic realities of Ancient Egyp...)

    1990
  • House Of Dreams

    (House of Dreams is a powerful story of passion and jealou...)

    1994
  • Seer of Egypt

    (Huy has risen from lowly origins to become the Seer of th...)

    2008
  • The Twice Born 2007
  • The King's Man 2011
  • Stargate 1982
  • The Oasis 1999

Interests

• music

Connections

In 1966 Pauline Gedge married and returned to Alberta, Canada, with her husband. The couple returned to England the next year, and their first son, Simon, was born there in January 1968. In 1969 they came back to Edmonton, and their second son, Roger, was born there in December 1970.

By 1972 Pauline Gedge was divorced, and she moved east of Edmonton to the village of Edgerton. During 1986, she met and fell in love with her second husband, Bernie Ramanauskas. Pauline Gedge and her second husband divorced some years ago.

Ex-husband:

Bernie Ramanauskas

Gedge's ex-husband, Bernie Ramanauskas, provided the historical research for many of her novels.

Son:

Simon

Son:

Roger

References

• Contemporary Authors New Revision Series