Life
1930- ; b. 12 Jan., Dublin; dg. Denis Johnston and Shelagh Richards and
sis. of Michael [Robin] Johnston; played page to her mother's St. Joan
in Shaw's play (Olympia Th., 1943); ed. Park House Sch., and TCD, joining
Trinity Players; m. solicitor Ian
Smyth, 1951; settled for a year in Paris, where Smyth worked with film
company; began writing fiction but destroyed early efforts incl. The
Gates (1973); novels, The Captains and the Kings (1972), dealing
with the relationship between war-survivor Mr Prendergast and the Catholic
boy Diarmid, leading to the older man’s being ostracised as a ‘sex
maniac’; published by Hamish Hamilton, its success resulting in the rapid appearance of The
Gates (1973), though written earlier; divorced Smyth, 1974; issued
How Many Miles to Babylon? (1974), dealing with the World War I;
Shadows on Our Skin (1977), the cross-community experience of a Catholic boy in Derry during the Troubles, shortlisted for Booker Prize, with
epigraph and title from lyric of Horslips; settled at Brook Hall, outside
Derry on second marriage to David Gilliland; The Old Jest (1979),
set in the War of Independence, winner of Whitbread Prize; The Christmas
Tree (1981), dealing with gender issues; The Railway Station Man
(1984), set in Donegal and dealing with arrival of Mr Hawthorne, a railway
enthusiast, and his relationship with the ageing Helen Cuffe, a Protestant,
ending with his tragic murder in the Troubles; The Old Jest filmed
as The Dawning, with Anthony Hopkins as ‘the travelling man’,
1986; Fool’s Sanctuary (1987), centred on Miranda Martin and
dealing with the conflict between her brother, engaged on information-gathering
for the government, and her lover, a Republican volunteer who sacrifices
himself to save him; narrated in old age at Termon, a big house in Co.
Cork; left Hamish Hamilton with editor Christopher Sinclair Stevenson;
The Invisible Worm (1991), concerning paternal incest and the tragedies
arising from it, winner of Daily Express best book, 1992; worked
with prisoners in H-Block, Long Kesh/Maze, in 1993; three dramatic monologues
premiered at Linen Hall Library, 8th March 1996; The Illusionist (1995),
in which Stella, a writer, describes the hold that her husband Martyn,
the ‘illusionist’ of the title and a brutal deceptive man, has
over her; he combines magic displays with gun-dealings, and is eventually
blown up by the IRA; stage-version of How Many Miles to Babylon? at
Belfast Lyric (Sept. 1994); Desert Lullaby premiered at Belfast
Lyric Theatre (Oct. 1996); two earlier plays, The Nightingale Not the
Lark and The Invisible Man, launched in America at the
Irish Repertory Theatre, New York, April 1997; Two Moons (1998),
a novel of three generations dealing with family bonds and ageing; literary
awards incl. Robert Pitman, the Yorkshire Post literary award,
and Giles Cooper Award for Best Radio play; issued The Gingerbread
Woman (2000), novel charting the relationship between a Southern Protestant
woman and a northern widower, each with tragic memories, set in Killiney;
This is Not a Novel (2002), narrating the trauma of Imogen, who
loses a brother through drowning, and that of her grandmother, who lost
a son in Gallipoli; Johnston is a member of Aosdana; the children by her
first marriage are Patrick, Malcolm, Sarah and Lucy; recipient of Ireland Fund of Monaco Literary Bursary at PGIL (Monaco), Sept. 2004. DIW HOG FDA OCIL
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Works
Novels, Captains and the Kings (London: Hamish Hamilton
1972), 142pp., Do., ; rep. (London: Fontana, 1982); The Gates
(London: Hamish Hamilton 1973; rep. London: Fontana 1983); How
Many Miles to Babylon? (London: Hamish Hamilton 1974; rep. London:
Fontana 1981); Shadows on Our Skin (London: Hamish Hamilton 1977;
Penguin 1991) [ded. ‘for Brian Friel with constant admiration’];
The Old Jest (London: Hamish Hamilton 1979), 167pp. [ded. to her 2nd
husband: ‘for D.J.T.G. with love’], filmed as The Dawning,
and rep. as The Dawning (Harmondsworth: Penguin 1988), 167pp.;
The Christmas Tree (London: Hamish Hamilton 1981; rep. London:
Fontana 1982); The Railway Station Man (London: Hamish Hamilton
1984), 187pp.; Fool’s Sanctuary (London: Hamish Hamilton 1987;
Headline 1999), 152pp.; The Invisible Worm (London: Sinclair Stevenson
1991; reps. Penguin 1992), 182pp., and Do. [new edn.] (London:
Review 1999), 224pp.; The Illusionist (London: Sinclair Stevenson
1995; Minerva 1997; Vintage 1999), 219pp.; Two Moons (London: Headline
Review 1998), 232pp.; The Gingerbread Woman (London: Review 2000),
213pp.; This is Not a Novel (London: Review 2002), 213pp. Omnibus
Edns., The Essential Jennifer Johnston, preface by Sebastian
Barry (London: Review), 435pp.
Plays, Indian Summer (Lyric 1984, unpublished); The Nightingale not the Lark [title play, with The Porch and The Invisible Man (Dublin: Raven Arts 1988); Three Monologues, ‘Twinkletoes’; ‘Mustn’t Forget High Noon’; ‘Christine’ (Belfast: Lagan Press 1995), 68pp.; The Desert Lullaby: A Play in Two Acts (Belfast Lagan Press 1996), 51pp.; Selected Short Plays (Dublin: New Island 2003), 126pp.
Miscellaneous, ‘Jennifer Johnston’, [autograph chapter] in John Quinn, ed., A Portrait of the Artist as A Young Girl (London: Methuen 1986; rep. Mandarin 1990), pp.49-62; Keynote Address to Cultures of Ireland Group’ [27-28 Sept. 1991], in Edna Longley, ed., Culture in Ireland, Division or Diversity? (QUB 1991), pp.10-18 [giving a personal account of her family]; Preface to Helen Lewis, A Time to Speak (Blackstaff 1992) [on Nazi concentration camps].
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Criticism
Brian Donnelly, ‘The Big House in the Recent Novel’. Studies,
64 (Summer 1975), pp.134-42.
Seán McMahon, ‘Anglo-Irish Attitudes: The Novels of Jennifer Johnston’, Éire-Ireland, X, 3 (Autumn 1975), pp.131-41.
Mark Mortimer, ‘The World of Jennifer Johnston: A Look at Three Novels’, The Crane Bag, 4, 1 (1980), pp.88-94.
Shari Benstock, ‘The Masculine World of Jennifer Johnston’, in Thomas F. Staley, ed., Twentieth Century-Women Novelists (London: Macmillan 1982), pp.191-217.
Michael Kenneally, ‘Q & A with Jennifer Johnston’, Irish Literary Supplement, 3, 2 (Fall 1984), pp.25-7.
Bridget O’Toole, ‘Three Writers of the Big House, Elizabeth Bowen, Molly Keane, and Jennifer Johnston’, in Gerald Dawe and Edna Longley, eds., Across the Roaring Hill, The Protestant Imagination in Modern Ireland (Belfast: Blackstaff 1985), pp.124-38.
David Burleigh, ‘Dead and Gone: The Fiction of Jennifer Johnston and Julia O’Faolain’, in Masaru Sekine, ed., Irish Writers and Society at Large, Irish Literary Studies 22 (Gerrards Cross: Colin Smythe 1985), pp.1-15.
Seamus Deane, ‘Jennifer Johnston’, in Ireland Today, 1015 (February 1985), pp.4-6.
David Burleigh, ‘"Dead and Gone", Fiction of Jennifer Johnston and Julia O’Faolain’, in Masaru Sekine, ed., Irish Writers and Society at Large, [Irish Literary Studies No.22] (Gerrards Cross: Colin Smythe 1985), pp.1-15.
Rüdiger Imhof, ‘“A Little Bit of Ivory, Two Inches Wide”’: The Small World of Jennifer Johnston’s Fiction’, in Etudes Irlandaises, 10 (Dec. 1985), pp.129-44.
Joseph Connelly, ‘Legend and Lyric as Structure in the Selected Fiction of Jennifer Johnston’, Éire-Ireland, 21, 3 (1986), pp.119-24.
Heinz Kosok, ‘The Novels of Jennifer Johnston’, in Maria Diedrich and Christoph Schoneich, eds., Studien zur englischen und amerikanischen Prosa nach dem Ersten Weltkrieg: Festschrift fur Kurt Otten zum 60. Geburtstag (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1986), pp.98-111.
Heinz Kosok, ‘Novels of Jennifer Johnston’, Studien zür englischen und amerikanischen Prose nach den Erslen Weltkrieg. Festschrift für Kurt Offen, ed., Maria Diedrich & Christoph Schoneich (Darmstadt 1986), pp.98-111.
Derek Mahon, ‘Indian Summer’, review of Fool’s Sanctuary in Irish Times (1987), [q.p.]; rep. in Mahon, Journalism 1970-1995 (Dublin: Gallery 1996), pp.102-04 [infra].
James M. Cahalan, The Irish Novel: A Critical History (Dublin: Gill & Macmillan 1988), pp.291-33.
Heather E. Dermott, Study of the Big House Novel [Keane, Bowen, J. G. Farrell, Johnston] (MA Thesis, Univ. of Ulster, 1989), 84pp.
José Lanters, ‘Jennifer Johnston’s Divided Ireland’, in C. C. Barfoot and Theo D’Haen, eds., The Clash of Ireland, Literary Contrasts and Connections (Amsterdam: Rodopi 1989); pp.209-22.
Ann Owens Weekes, Irish Women Writers: An Uncharted Tradition (Kentucky UP 1990), p.212 [infra]; Rüdiger Imhof, review of Invisible Worm, in Linen Hall Review (Apr. 1990), p.28 [infra].
Jürgen Kamm, ‘Jennifer Johnston’, in Rüdiger Imhof, ed., Contemporary Irish Novelists (Tübingen: Gunter Narr 1990), pp.125-41 [infra].
Ann Owens Weekes, ‘Jennifer Johnston: The Imaginative Crucible’, in Irish Women Writers: An Uncharted Tradition (Kentucky UP 1990), 191-211.
Paddy Woodworth, ‘Invisiable Characters of the Heart’ [interview], in Irish Times (23 Feb. 1991), ‘Weekend’, p.5.
Mark Mortimer, ‘Jennifer Johnston and the Big House’, in Jacqueline Genet, ed., The Big House in Ireland (Dingle: Brandon; NY: Barnes & Noble 1991), pp.209-215.
Janet Egleson Dunleavy and Rachel Lynch, ‘Contemporary Irish Women Novelists’, in James Acheson, ed., The British Novel Since 1960 (NY: St Martin’s 1991), [q.p.].
Eileen Kearney, ‘Current Voices in the Irish Theatre: New Dramatic Voices’, in Colby Quarterly, 27, 4 (Dec. 1991), pp.225-32.
David Stevens, ‘Religious Ireland (II)’, in Edna Longley, ed., Culture in Ireland, Diversity or Division [Proceedings of the Cultures of Ireland Group Conference] (QUB: Inst. of Irish Studies 1991), p.145 [infra].
Christine St. Peter, ‘Jennifer Johnston's Irish Troubles: A Materialist Feminist Reading', in Toni O'Brien & David Cairns, eds., Gender in Irish Writing (Open University 1991), cp.123-24.
Klaus Lubbers, ‘“This White Elephant of a Place”, Jennifer Johnston’s Use of the Big House’, in Otto Rauchbauer, ed., Ancestral Voices: The Big House in Irish Literature: A Collection of Interpretations (Dublin: Lilliput 1992), 307pp. [with cover by Edith Somerville].
Keith Jeffrey, ‘Irish Culture and the Great War’, in Bullán (Autumn 1994), p.94 [infra].
Karen McManus, ‘Prodding Republicanism’, [interview] Fortnight (April 1995), pp.36-37 [infra].
Penny Perrick, ‘Now you see him ...’, review of The Illusionist, in Sunday Times, Books, (7 Dec. 1995), [infra].
Eileen Battersby, review of The Illusionist in Irish Times (16 Sept. 1995), 'Weekend', p. 8.
Danny Morrison, review of Three for the Price of One in Fortnight (April 1996), p.40.
Richard York, ‘“A Daft Way to Earn a Living”: Jennifer Johnston and the Writer’s Art; An Interview’, Bill Lazenblatt, ed., Writing Ulster [‘Northern Narratives’], No. 6 (1999), pp.30-47.
Vera Kreilkamp, The Anglo-Irish Novel and the Big House (Syracuse UP; Eurospan 1999).
Ruth Frehner, The Colonizer's Daughters: Gender in the Anglo-Irish Big House Novel (Tubingen: Franacke 1999), 256pp.
James M. Cahalan, Double Visions: Women and Men in Modern and Contemporary Irish Fiction (Syracuse: Syracuse UP 1999), 234pp.
Eileen Battersby, review of Jennifer Johnston, The Gingerbread Woman (London: Review), in The Irish Times (25 Sept. 2000) [infra].
C. L. Dallat, review of The Gingerbread Man [sic?] (2000), in Times Literary Supplement (10 Nov. 2000) [infra].
Eileen Battersby, ‘Making Sense of Life’, interview with Jennifer Johnston, in The Irish Times, Weekend (30 Sept. 2000) [infra].
Sue Leonard, review of This is Not a Novel, in Books Ireland (Dec. 2002), p.312.
Ann Owen Weekes, ‘Figuring the Mother in Contemporary Irish Fiction’, in Liam Harte & Michael Parker, eds., Contemporary Irish Fiction: Themes, Tropes, Theories (London: Macmillan 2000).
Christine St. Peter, Changing Ireland: Strategies in Contemporary Women’s Fiction (London: Macmillan 2000), and Rüdiger Imhof, The Modern Irish Novel: Irish Novelists after 1945 (Dublin: Wolfhound 2002).
Seamus Deane, A Short History of Irish Literature (London: Hutchinson & Co. 1986), “Contemporary Literature” [chap.].
Rüdiger Imhof, review of Invisible Worm, in Linen Hall Review (April [1991]), p.28.
Rhonda Kenneally, reviewing The Invisible Worm (NY: Carroll & Graf 1993) [US ed.] in Irish Literary Supplement [q.d.]
Shirley Kelly, interview, ‘It all worked out rather well’, in Books Ireland (October 2002), pp.270-71.
Eileen Battersby, ‘Making Sense of Life’, interview with Jennifer Johnston, Irish Times, Weekend, 30 Sept. 2000, on publication of The Gingerbread Man (Wed., 4 Oct. 2001).
John Kenny, review of The Essential Jennifer Johnston (London: Review), in Times Literary Supplement (17 Dec. 1999), p.20.
Dissertations, Robert Goldsmith, ‘The Trouble with Literature’ (MA Dipl. Diss., University of Ulster, 1996), p.15 [infra]; Aveen McManus, “Narratives of Childhood - A Comparative Study” (UU MA Diss., 2005) [with Mary Costello, Frances Molloy, David Park, Glenn Patterson, Seamus Deane, Edna O’Brien, Patrick MacCabe].
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Notes
Andrew Carpenter & Peter Fallon, eds., The Writers: A Sense
of Place (Dublin: O’Brien Press 1980), selects ‘Extract
from a Novel’ [The Christmas Tree], with photo-port., pp.72-76.
Seamus Deane, ed., Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing (Derry: Field Day 1991), Vol. 3 prints extracts from The Captains and the Kings [1031-36]; 611 [Deane, Celtic Revivals, 1985, big house surrounded by unruly tenantry; culture besieged by barbarity, a refined aristocracy beset by a vulgar middle class are recurrent images in 20th c. Irish fiction drawing heavily on Yeats’s poetry since then; cites works by Bowen, Higgins, Kilroy, Banville, Johnston]; 939 [urbane, lyrical and elegant depiction of Big House disintegration, ed., comm., J. W. Foster], 1434 [Derek Mahon, adaptations. incl. work by Jennifer Johnston]; BIOG, 1134 [error: has lived in Northern Ireland since 1951].
Helena Sheehan, Irish Television Drama, A Society and Its Stories (RTÉ/Mercier 1987), lists TV films, The Bondage Field, dir. John Lynch (1981); The Gates, dir . Tony Barry (1970).
Books in Print (to 1994), Captains and the Kings (London: Hamish Hamilton 1972; Fontana 1982; Penguin 1988, 1990); The Gates (London: Hamish Hamilton 1973; Fontana 1983); How Many Miles to Babylon? (London: Hamish Hamilton 1974; Collins/Fontana 1982); Shadows on Our Skin (London: Hamish Hamilton 1977; Coronet 1979; Penguin 1991); The Old Jest (London: Hamish Hamilton 1979; Penguin 1988); The Christmas Tree (London: Hamish Hamilton 1981; Penguin 1989); The Railway Station Man (London: Hamish Hamilton 1984; Penguin 1989, 1994); Fool’s Sanctuary (London: Hamish Hamilton 1987; Penguin 1988, 1992); The Invisible Worm (London: Sinclair Stevenson 1991; Penguin 1992); The Nightingale Not the Lark, with The Porch and The Invisible Man (Dublin: Raven Arts 1988).
The Captains and the Kings (1972), dealing with the relationship
between the aged Anglo-Irishman Captain Charles Prendergast and a young
local Diarmid Toorish, giving rise to groundless suspicions of paedophilia
in the community and resulting in ostracism and death. For the source of the title, see Rudyard Kipling’s
hymn “Lest We Forget”, in which stanza 2 reads: ‘The tumult
and the shouting dies / The captains and the kings depart / Still stands
the ancient sacrifice / An humble and a contrite heart / Lord of Hosts,
be with us yet, / Lest we forget - lest we forget’. In stanza 4 falls the now-infamous phrase ‘lesser breeds beneath the law’, and stanza 3 the
line ‘all our pomp of yesterday / Is one with Ninevah and Tyre’.
Note that is reprinted in the section of the Church of Ireland Hymnal entitled called “Our Country” (1960;
1987 edn.) See also Kipling’s
hymn to Christ, here p.525.
The Gates (1973), is the story of the orphaned Anglo-Irish girl called Minnie and the discoveries she makes about her family’s past.
How Many Miles to Babylon? (1974), dealing with the relationship between Lieut. Alex Moore, a young Anglo-Irishman, and Jeremy Crowe, a stable-boy turned soldier whom he shoots out of mercy in his cell before execution as a deserter (leave without absence) and is himself court-martialled; the friendship that springs up between the two is opposed by Alex’s mother Alicia, and later by Major Glendinning, who places Moore in charge of the firing-squad.
Shadows on Our Skin (1977), concerns Joe Logan, a young boy, a sensitive and artistic youth and son of a Civil-War Republican, now turned alcholic bully, who grows up in Catholic Derry during the Troubles and forms a relationship with his English teacher, a young woman from a mixed marriage in the South who is engaged to a British soldier stationed in Germany and who is later tarred and feathered.
The Old Jest (1979), set in the Anglo-Irish War, during which Nancy Gulliver, living on and Anglo-Irish estate with her spiteful aunt and her senile grandfather, achieves independence from her class and accord with the new Ireland with promptings from Angus Barry, an Anglo-Irish nationalist. The Old Jest was filmed as The Dawning.
The Christmas Tree (1981), a meditation on creativity centred on gender issues, narrated by the dying Constance Keating (‘non-Odyssey: no plot, no adventures, no love’).
The Railway Station Man (1984), in which Helen Cuffe falls in love with an Roger Hawthorne, Englishman who comes to Donegal to restore disused station, and sees him and her child killed.
Fool’s Sanctuary (1987), narrated by the aged Miranda on her death-bed, it tells of the fateful week-end during the War of Independence when Cathal, her childhood friend, is doomed to execution by the IRA when he betrays a plot to murder her brother and another officer returning from the Front to an Anglo-Irish country house.
The Invisible Worm (1991), concerns Laura Quinlan’s friendship with a spoiled priest, Dominic, and the exorcism of the trauma sexual abuse by her father and the tragic death of her mother.
The Illusionist (1995), in which Stella, a writer, describes the hold that her husband Martyn, the ‘illusionist’ of the title and a brutal deceptive man, has over her; he combines magic displays with gun-dealings, and is eventually blown up by the IRA; Two Moons (1998), a novel of three generations dealing with family bonds and ageing.
Two Moons (1998), Mimi and her daughter Grace, living in a house overlooking Dublin Bay, reassess their lives in the course of an unexpected visit from Polly and her striking boyfriend, Grace’s contemplating her future, and Mimi the disappointments and betrayals of the past.
Edinburgh Festival (Sept. 1998); The Festival was attended by Johnston, with other Irish writers incl. Bernard MacLaverty, Joan Lingard, Owen Dudley Edwards, Victoria Glendenning and Ardal O’Hanlon. (Irish Times, 12 Sept. 1998).
Brendan Behan’s parody of "Lest We Forget": ‘In our dreams we see old Harrow / And hear the crow’s loud caw, / At the flower show our big marrow /Takes the prize from Evelyn Waugh. /Cups of tea and some dry sherry, / Vintage cars, these tsimple things, / So let’s drink up and be merry /Oh, the Captains and the Kings.’ (The Hostage; Monsieur’s song Cited in Benedict Kiely, ‘A memory of Brendan Behan’, in A Raid into Dark Corners (Cork UP 1999), p.175.
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Princess Grace Irish Library (Monaco)