Alan Garner (Author of The Weirdstone of Brisingamen)

Alan Garner鈥檚 Followers (716)

Alan Garner

Born

in Congleton, Cheshire, England, The United Kingdom

October 17, 1934

Genre

Science Fiction & Fantasy, Children's Books

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Alan Garner OBE (born 17 October 1934) is an English novelist who is best known for his children's fantasy novels and his retellings of traditional British folk tales. His work is firmly rooted in the landscape, history and folklore of his native county of Cheshire, North West England, being set in the region and making use of the native Cheshire dialect.

Born into a working-class family in Congleton, Cheshire, Garner grew up around the nearby town of Alderley Edge, and spent much of his youth in the wooded area known locally as 'The Edge', where he gained an early interest in the folklore of the region. Studying at Manchester Grammar School and then Oxford University, in 1957 he moved to the nearby village of Blackden, where he bought and r Alan Garner OBE (born 17 October 1934) is an English novelist who is best known for his children's fantasy novels and his retellings of traditional British folk tales. His work is firmly rooted in the landscape, history and folklore of his native county of Cheshire, North West England, being set in the region and making use of the native Cheshire dialect.

Born into a working-class family in Congleton, Cheshire, Garner grew up around the nearby town of Alderley Edge, and spent much of his youth in the wooded area known locally as 'The Edge', where he gained an early interest in the folklore of the region. Studying at Manchester Grammar School and then Oxford University, in 1957 he moved to the nearby village of Blackden, where he bought and renovated an Early Modern building known as Toad Hall. His first novel, The Weirdstone of Brisingamen, was published in 1960. A children's fantasy novel set on the Edge, it incorporated elements of local folklore in its plot and characters. Garner completed a sequel, The Moon of Gomrath (1963), but left the third book of the trilogy he had envisioned. Instead he produced a string of further fantasy novels, Elidor (1965), The Owl Service (1967) and Red Shift (1973).

Turning away from fantasy as a genre, Garner produced The Stone Book Quartet (1979), a series of four short novellas detailing a day in the life of four generations of his family. He also published a series of British folk tales which he had rewritten in a series of books entitled Alan Garner's Fairy Tales of Gold (1979), Alan Garner's Book of British Fairy Tales (1984) and A Bag of Moonshine (1986). In his subsequent novels, Strandloper (1996) and Thursbitch (2003), he continued writing tales revolving around Cheshire, although without the fantasy elements which had characterised his earlier work. In 2012, he finally published a third book in the Weirdstone trilogy.

Reference:

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Combine Editions
Alan Garner鈥檚 books

Average rating: 3.66 · 38,949 ratings · 4,748 reviews · 87 distinct works 鈥� Similar authors

	The Weirdstone of Brisingamen (Tales of Alderley, #1) 3.94 avg rating — 8,495 ratings — published 1960 — 27 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Owl Service 3.66 avg rating — 7,833 ratings — published 1967 — 92 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Treacle Walker 3.12 avg rating — 8,985 ratings — published 2021 — 17 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Elidor 3.85 avg rating — 3,590 ratings — published 1965 — 92 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Moon of Gomrath (Tales of Alderley, #2) 3.95 avg rating — 2,745 ratings — published 1963 — 88 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Red Shift 3.60 avg rating — 1,694 ratings — published 1973 — 32 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Boneland (Tales of Alderley, #3) 3.70 avg rating — 1,243 ratings — published 2012 — 12 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Thursbitch 3.66 avg rating — 961 ratings — published 2003 — 7 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Stone Book Quartet 4.14 avg rating — 532 ratings — published 1976 — 20 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Collected Folk Tales 4.05 avg rating — 435 ratings — published 2011	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

More books by Alan Garner…

Series by Alan Garner

Tales of Alderley (3 books)
by

Alan Garner

3.92 avg rating — 12,480 ratings

Weirdstone Trilogy (3 books)
by

Alan Garner

3.92 avg rating — 12,480 ratings

The Stone Book Quartet (4 books)
by

Alan Garner,

Michael Foreman (Illustrator)

4.16 avg rating — 784 ratings

Quotes by Alan Garner (?)

“She wants to be flowers, but you make her owls. You must not complain, then, if she goes hunting.”
― Alan Garner, The Owl Service

84 likes

“The job of a storyteller is to speak the truth. But what we feel most deeply can鈥檛 be spoken in words alone. At this level, only images connect. And here, story becomes symbol; symbol is myth. And myth is truth.”
― Alan Garner

38 likes

“... I had never given much credence to the phenomenon of "writer's block". I was more inclined to think of it as "writer's impatience", and to follow Arthur Koestler's dictum: "Soak; and wait.”
― Alan Garner, The Voice That Thunders

20 likes

See all Alan Garner's quotes »

Polls

MARCH FANTASY: This poll decides which two novels move on to the run-off polls for our March Fantasy Book of the Month!

The Way of Shadows by Brent Weeks

21 votes, 21.9%

The Scar by China Mi茅ville

19 votes, 19.8%

Tooth and Claw by Jo Walton

14 votes, 14.6%

The Princess Bride by William Goldman

11 votes, 11.5%

The Etched City by K.J. Bishop

11 votes, 11.5%

Karavans by Jennifer Roberson

7 votes, 7.3%

Darkborn by Alison Sinclair

7 votes, 7.3%

The Owl Service by Alan Garner

6 votes, 6.3%

96 total votes

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