Diana Wynne Jones was born on August 16, 1934, in London, England, to parents who were both educators. Twenty-two years later, in 1956, she received a Bachelor's degree from St. Anne's College, Oxford and married John A. Burrow, a university professor.

Jones began writing as a child so that she and her sisters would have interesting, exciting, and entertaining material to read; this resourceful and inventive attitude towards literature and its production is still evident in her work today. Indeed, the importance of the family and its relationships is a central concern in early works like The Ogre Downstairs and Eight Days of Luke, both of which examine from a child's perspective dysfunctional familial environments.

Very little information is available about Jones. She translates the raw material and curious perspectives garnered from her experience as homemaker into her fiction, which has as its hallmark the same profuse...