Joanna Cannan

Short Biography

JOANNA CANNAN (1896-1961)(married name Pullein-Thompson)The work of Joanna Cannan, in her time a popular and prolific writer of mysteries and children’s fiction as well as mainstream fiction, has experienced a (slight) revival in the past decade or so. Her novel Princes in the Land (1938), about motherhood, was revived by Persephone Books, and several of her mysteries have been reprinted by Rue Morgue Press, including They Rang Up the Police (1939), Death at the Dog (1940), and Murder Included (1950). Her career began with The Misty Valley (1922), the semi-autobiographical tale of a young wife balancing her creative needs against the demands of marriage. Sheila Both-Ways (1928) similarly deals with a wife and mother torn between her family and a lover, while No Walls of Jasper (1930) is a darker tale of murder and suicide, dedicated to Cannan's friend Georgette Heyer and later reprinted by Penguin. High Table (1930), set among Oxford dons, was reprinted in the 1980s as an Oxford Twentieth Century Classic and was praised for its vivid portrayal of Oxford. Frightened Angels (1936) returns to the theme of murder, and later Cannan wrote a family saga extending across two novels, Little I Understood (1948) and And All I Learned (1952). In addition, Cannan is credited with creating the true girls’ pony story with the acclaimed A Pony for Jean (1936) and its several sequels and variants.