Jane Duncan wrote a fictionalised account of her own life and as such, it is particularly valuable as a record of the time she lived in.
Duncan, being meta before her time, also wrote and published books as_ Janet Sandison -- the very books that much later in the 'My Friends' series her fictionalised self writes.
In 1959, the London publishing house of MacMillan was besieged by reporters interested in a new Scottish writer. Jane Duncan was making publishing history: MacMillan had bought no less than seven of her titles in one go. Duncan had been writing for years, burning many of her efforts before anyone read them, hiding others in desk drawers and knitting baskets in her linen cupboard. Set in her childhood haunts on the Black Isle, the first of her books, My Friends The Miss Boyds, depicted Highland life at the close of the Great War. It was the first of a series of 19 Friends titles. Duncan wrote 32 books in total, including eight for children. Not one remains in print but that is about to change. Millrace Publishing, a small, independent, English publisher, is to reissue My Friends The Miss Boyds next month to mark the centenary of Duncan's birth. The story is told through the curious eyes of nine-year-old Janet Sandison, who is sharp and observant but basically ignorant of, and confused by, strange adult ways. But this is no fey depiction of Highland life. There is warmth and humour but the themes are poignant and, for their time, surprisingly frank. Duncan writes of mental illness, of sexual relationships and illegitimacy, but also of a changing world shadowed by war. There is that tinge of darkness that often marks the best of writing, a hint of fear and impermanency, a present shivering in the shadow of an uncertain future.Her books were semi-autobiographical, drawing on the places and faces of her childhood, particularly The Colony, her grandparents' home in the hills above Jemimaville, which became Reachfar in her novels. Duncan spent much of her childhood there. Her father had moved to Glasgow to become a policeman when there was not enough work on the family croft, but he retired to Jemimaville and Duncan, too, chose to spend her final years on the shores of Udale Bay. Her grave is not hard to find at Kirkmichael, where the silence is broken only by birdsong and the mournful call of distant sheep. "In memory of Jane Duncan (Elizabeth Jane Cameron). Author. Died October 1976, aged 66 years." You would think it would be the other way round, that her nom de plume, Jane Duncan, would be in brackets rather than her real name. It suggests that "author" was the dominant part of her. Death silences us all, of course. But how poignant that a woman who wrote so prolifically, in whom there was such pride, should, less than 40 years later, not have a single book left in print. Only now is she to be given another hearing.
Read more at: http://www.scotsman.com/lifestyle/culture/books/jane-duncan-may-be-out-of-print-for-40-years-but-she-is-about-to-be-heard-again-1-475990
Search for Jane Duncan's voice and what rings out clearly is how far ahead of her time she was, how she forged a strong, independent life at a time when women were not encouraged to do so. Her mother died of Asian flu when she was ten and her younger brother Jock was an infant. Jock was sent to his grandparents at The Colony but Duncan attended Lenzie Academy and stayed with her father, who policed the Renton and Alexandria areas. Her father had a housekeeper whom he would go on to marry and Duncan was very unhappy about the relationship. "She didn't like her, to the point that she wouldn't go home if this woman was there," explains Neil. "I think she would have gone to university, got away from home, as quickly as possible. "There weren't many female graduates in the 1930s. "She was a very clever woman," says Neil. "Very strong. She was very pro women and pro women fighting as equals in a man's world. A pretty indomitable character. If she got patronised, she would really go for people."
Sadly, Clapperton [her husband] became ill with heart disease in Jamaica. Ironically, it was this that catapulted Duncan to literary fame. Worried about the cost of medical bills, she took a manuscript from the linen cupboard and sent it to a London agent. Clapperton died just after she signed her first contract and she came home to Scotland alone to face a new life. "I think she was at a low ebb when she lost Sandy," says Neil. "She was 49 and had no idea how to make a living." Materially, she had nothing. "She wasn't married and obviously had nothing to show for the relationship other than a few pieces of furniture," says Donald. Writing gave her confidence. "I think she had been quite lacking in self-esteem about her writing at the start," says Neil. "But the early ones were best sellers and I think a lot of her character came out then.
"In terms of social issues, she did not flinch from difficult themes. When the Cameron children demanded to know why Auntie Bet didn't write a book about them, she began her series for children based on an essay they gave her. The youngest Cameron child, Ian, who was born with Down's syndrome, was a special character in these books. We take such a thing for granted now, but at that time, it was a condition people preferred not to talk about. Duncan described Ian as one of the best things to happen to their family. Seonaid remembers that, when Ian was born, her mother was very upset. Duncan came to the rescue. "My parents were told they should send Ian away, that he would hold the other three children back. It was very difficult for them to bring him up but Auntie Bet was very, very supportive and I know she helped financially so mum could get someone in to help in the house. She was very close to Ian really. She was a bit fascinated by him." Neil agrees. "She felt very strongly that Ian's life was at least as valuable as the rest of us – which it is."
She also wrote about lesbians, homosexuals, people with Asperger's or autism, and those disabled by the war. She loved the differences in people and described them in detail, with curiosity and a longing to understand.
It is here that the value of Jane Duncan's voice is underlined. You stand on the remoteness of this hill and wonder how people ever eked out a living here. "I didn't realise until I went back to read the Miss Boyds," says Donald, "what a fascinating historical document it is." There was, perhaps, a certain stiff sensitivity locally at times about the fact that Duncan's work was semi-autobiographical and some characters were recognisable. But to read of those characters now is to bring a generation back to life. "When we look for a picture of Highland life that has now gone, she presents that picture," says writer and broadcaster Carl MacDougall, author of Writing Scotland. She may have been too popular to have attracted many serious literary critics (though she was not without admirers) but, says MacDougall, "what can be overlooked in a writer like Jane Duncan is the actual craft. These novels are well written and very entertaining. I am surprised she hasn't been picked up again before now."Read more at: http://www.scotsman.com/lifestyle/culture/books/jane-duncan-may-be-out-of-print-for-40-years-but-she-is-about-to-be-heard-again-1-475990
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