Alan Garner Summary

When Alan Garner was a child, he almost died three times. A very sickly boy, he suffered variously from spinal and cerebral meningitis, pleurisy, pneumonia, and diphtheria, at times so ill that he cou... Read more

In 1968 Alan Garner, defending his focus on the adolescent audience, asserted in "A Bit More Practice" that "This group of people is the most important of all, and selfishly, it makes the best audienc... Read more

Critical Essay by John Rowe Townsend [Alan Garner's] books, though few, have had an extraordinarily powerful impact; they have been felt and not forgotten. (p. 108) Because Garner's four... Read more

Critical Essay by Aidan Chambers Something has happened to Alan Garner. He is never a predictable writer, and one can never be sure just what he will produce next. But one thing has so far been common... Read more

Critical Essay by Margaret Meek To distil the message from Alan Garner's quartet of books which, so far, includes The Stone Book, Tom Fobble's Day, and now, Granny Reardun, the reader ha... Read more

Critical Essay by Margery Fisher Holly from the Bongs is, to put it simply, a nativity play. It was written for the Cheshire village of Goostrey and performed at Christmas 1965 in the stable of the Cr... Read more

Critical Essay by Patricia Mcmahon [As William Butler Yeats] saw the gray and grimy streets of Dublin give birth to a "terrible beauty," so Alan Garner shows that the complacent lives in... Read more

Critical Essay by Philippa Pearce Alan Garner's writing is marked by hard thinking and hard, fierce imagining. These have been brought to bear upon a distinctive choice of subject: the meeting-... Read more