Nevertheless, no writer for comic books has ever attracted as much favorable attention in as short a time as Gaiman has, and this phenomenon has at least perplexed many readers of standard-print fiction. Gaiman's career illustrates one of the main themes of his writing--a need to transcend categories, to respond to new possibilities.
The eldest of three children, Neil Richard Gaiman was born on 10 November 1960 in Portchester, England. His father, David Gaiman, owned a firm that manufactured vitamins, and his mother, Sheila (née Goldman) Gaiman, was a pharmacist. His mother was able to take a leave of absence from work during Gaiman's infancy, and one of his earliest memories is of himself and his mother playing with an alphabet carved out of wood. Gaiman has said that he always considered himself to be a writer; as he told Jessie Horsting in 1997, another of his first memories, from when he was about three years old, is of grabbing his mother and dictating a poem to her: "I was proud of it; I wanted it down on paper."
He remembers later nights spent "reading by whatever light came in by the hall" after he had been sent to bed.
This is a free page. This page contains 197 words. This
biography contains 3,643 words (approx. 12 pages at 300
words per page).
Read the rest of this Biography with our Neil (Richard) Gaiman Access Pass.
