Jan Mark - Life

Life

Janet Marjorie Brisland was christened 1943 in Welwyn Garden City, Hertfordshire and was raised and educated in Kent. She was a secondary school teacher between 1965 and 1971 and became a full-time writer in 1974. She was married once and divorced, and is survived by her daughter Isobel. Her son Alex took his own life 8 months after her death.

Mark is known for acutely-observed short stories that are concise and show an imaginative use of language. She also wrote novels about seemingly ordinary children in contemporary settings, e.g. Thunder and Lightnings, as well as science fiction novels set in their own universes with their own rules, e.g. The Ennead. Her last works include the young adult novels The Eclipse of the Century and Useful Idiots.

The title of Thunder and Lightnings, a story set in rural Norfolk, is a reference to the British RAF jet fighter the English Electric Lightning and in turn inspired the name of a website of the history of that aeroplane and others of a similar time.

Jan Mark was popular in Flanders, Belgium, where she participated in an educational project to stimulate teachers of English into using teenage fiction in the classroom. Her Flemish friends devoted a website to her and to her work.

Jan Mark died suddenly at her home in Oxford from meningitis-related septicaemia in January 2006.