Ask the Chatbot Games & Quizzes History & Society Science & Tech Biographies Animals & Nature Geography & Travel Arts & Culture ProCon Money Videos
An Angel at My Table
Introduction References & Edit History Related Topics
Images
Janet Frame
Britannica AI Icon
Adding us as a Preferred Source tells Google you trust our content, so our articles show up more often in your Google Search, Discover feed, and AI Overviews.
verifiedCite
While every effort has been made to follow citation style rules, there may be some discrepancies. Please refer to the appropriate style manual or other sources if you have any questions.
Select Citation Style
Feedback
Corrections? Updates? Omissions? Let us know if you have suggestions to improve this article (requires login).
Thank you for your feedback

Our editors will review what you’ve submitted and determine whether to revise the article.

External Websites
Janet Frame
Janet Frame Janet Frame, author of An Angel at My Table (1989).

An Angel at My Table

work by Frame
Written by
Denise Imwold
Denise Imwold is a contributor to 501 Must-Read Books. Her work appears in Encyclopaedia Britannica as part of a joint publishing agreement with the publisher of 501 Must-Read Books,...
Denise Imwold
Fact-checked by
Britannica Editors
Encyclopaedia Britannica's editors oversee subject areas in which they have extensive knowledge, whether from years of experience gained by working on that content or via study for an advanced degree....
Britannica Editors
History

An Angel at My Table, autobiography, published in 1989, by New Zealand writer Janet Frame. The work contains the three previously published volumes of her autobiography, To the Is-land (1982), An Angel at My Table (1984), and The Envoy from Mirror City (1985).

She begins by describing her childhood in a large, impoverished family in New Zealand. Frame was painfully introverted and awkward and felt isolated within her family. She was further dislocated by the drowning deaths of two of her sisters. Frame then sensitively recounts her years as a college student, trainee teacher, and apprentice writer.

After a suicide attempt and then a dramatic abandonment of her classroom when she was learning to teach, she was admitted to a psychiatric hospital, where she was misdiagnosed with schizophrenia. This resulted in a dichotomy between her authentic self and the person the medical personnel thought she was and treated. She spent most of her 20s in and out of mental institutions, enduring more than a hundred episodes of electroconvulsive therapy. During this time, she read constantly and also began writing. Her first book, an acclaimed short-story collection called The Lagoon, was published in 1951, while she was still a psychiatric patient. Just as she was about to undergo a lobotomy, hospital officials found out she had received the 1952 Hubert Church Memorial Award for Prose, and the operation was canceled.

The last quarter of the book is much happier. Freed from family and institutional constraints, Frame was able to focus on writing. She met like-minded people, including writer Frank Sargeson, who encouraged her to apply for a literary grant. Frame then spent the next several years living in Europe, where she wrote and published most of her novels.

An Angel at My Table is a tale of hardship, resilience, and hope, a fascinating glimpse into the mind of an acclaimed writer. The 1990 film of the same name, directed by Jane Campion, is a faithful and beautiful adaptation.

Denise Imwold