Janet Frame (1924-2004) is a highly acclaimed New Zealand author of novels, short stories, poetry and the three-volume autobiography An Angel at My Table, which was adapted for the cinema by Jane Campion. Throughout her writing career she celebrated and thematized the creative function, tracking the mechanisms through which life can be translated into art, to the point that, when she chanced upon the poetry of R.M. Rilke (in the translation by J.B. Leishman), she exclaimed: ‘This is the story of my life!’. She won numerous local and international literary prizes, including the Commonwealth Prize for Best Book (with The Carpathians; 1988). She was awarded a CBE in 1983 and in 1990 she was made a Member of the Order of New Zealand, which is the country’s highest civil honour. She will remain in history as one of the most original and elegant stylists writing in English in the second half of the 20th century.