Elliott, Janice.

Janice Elliott (1931-1995) was born in Derbyshire and brought up in wartime Nottingham, where her father worked as a commercial artist. She was educated at Nottingham High School for Girls and later St Anne's College, Oxford, where she read English. She started her writing career by producing experimental blank verse dramas, which she forced student friends to read. She had no idea what career to pursue after graduating, but was sufficiently offended when she was advised by Oxford's appointments board to train as a secretary on the basis that it was a woman's vocation to serve, to become a journalist instead. She found a job as sub-editor on 'House and Garden', then a writing position on 'House Beautiful', and later a post on 'The Sunday Times' women's pages.

However, she left journalism to become a full-time writer in 1962 and then her career really began, with the publication of her first novel 'Cave With Echoes' (1962). This was received enthusiastically - Anthony Burgess wrote that it had style, was genuinely constructed and the characters excellent. Her fourth novel, 'The Buttercup Chain' (1967), in which four people change sexual partners with bewildering rapidity, was her one work not to receive good reviews, but Elliott had the satisfaction, three years after publication, of seeing it turned into a film under the same title. 'Secret Places' (1981), which used her experiences of her childhood in Nottingham during the war, was also made into a film in 1984.

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