# Janet Hitchman > Mediated Wiki article. Canonical URL: https://mediated.wiki/source/Janet_Hitchman > Markdown URL: https://mediated.wiki/source/Janet_Hitchman.md > Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Janet_Hitchman > Source revision: 1311455750 > License: Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/) British writer Janet Hitchman Born (1916-07-05)5 July 1916 Mutford, Suffolk Died 19 May 1980(1980-05-19) (aged 63) Norwich, Norfolk Occupation Writer Nationality English **Janet Hitchman** (5 July 1916 – 19 May 1980) was a British writer. ## Life Hitchman was born Elsie May Fields to Margaret Ames, a seamstress. On her birth certificate, her father's name was left blank. When she located her birth certificate as an adult, she found penciled on the back "Frederick Burrows, deceased 27.9.1916." Throughout her childhood she was known as Elsie Burrows. Hitchman's mother was a widow, her father a young soldier who was killed less than three months after her birth. Her mother gave the child to an elderly couple Elsie knew only as Gran and Granfer Sparkes[1] and died less than two years later.[2] While growing up, Hitchman contracted [mastoiditis](/source/Mastoiditis).[1] Hitchman's childhood, which she recalled in her 1960 memoir, *The King of the Barbareens*, was spent being passed from foster home to foster home, along with stints in hospitals, a home for mentally handicapped women, and the Thomas Anguish Hospital School of Housecraft for Girls in Norwich. At fourteen, she was sent to Dr. [Thomas John Barnardo](/source/Thomas_John_Barnardo)'s children's facility in [Barkingside](/source/Barkingside). Hitchman would later write an account of Barnardo's work, *They Carried the Sword*. While at Barnardo's, she gave herself the name Janet, adopted from *[Jane Eyre](/source/Jane_Eyre)*.[1] From Barnardo's, she was sent to a boarding house in London. She spent the next few years working a variety of jobs, ending up as a stage manager with a small theatre company. It was here she met her husband, Michael Hitchman. Together, they had a daughter, but in 1946 they divorced. Hitchman spent much of the next decade in a series of domestic jobs. She returned to [Norfolk](/source/Norfolk), where she lived for the rest of her life.[1] After the publication of *The King of the Barbareens*, she earned her living as a freelance writer, writing broadcast pieces for the [BBC](/source/BBC) and articles and reviews for a variety of publications. She wrote one novel, *Meeting for Burial*, which was set in a [Quaker](/source/Quaker) community based on the one she had joined in Norwich. She was commissioned to write a biography of [Dorothy L. Sayers](/source/Dorothy_L._Sayers), but was hampered by the lack of access to Sayers' private papers and members of her family. Despite this, the book, *Such a Strange Lady*, received some good reviews. Writing in the *[New York Times](/source/New_York_Times)*, Louise Bernikow called it "awfully intelligent, compassionate, interesting and, as they say, a very good read."[3] In *[The American Scholar](/source/The_American_Scholar_(magazine))*, [Carolyn Gold Heilbrun](/source/Carolyn_Gold_Heilbrun) described it as "unsound, unfair and distressing".[4] Hitchman was working on a life of the author, [Ouida](/source/Ouida), when she diagnosed with an inoperable cancer in 1978.[5] In her last 18 months, she recorded a series of interviews for BBC producer [Hallam Tennyson](/source/Hallam_Tennyson_(radio_producer)) in which she talked about her coming death. The resulting piece, "The Fact of Death," was broadcast on [BBC Radio 4](/source/BBC_Radio_4) in December 1980.[6] ## Books - Hitchman, Janet (1960). *The King of the Barbareens*. London: Putnam. [OCLC](/source/OCLC_(identifier)) [314777531](https://search.worldcat.org/oclc/314777531). - Hitchman, Janet (1966). *They carried the sword*. London: Gollancz. [OCLC](/source/OCLC_(identifier)) [2572260](https://search.worldcat.org/oclc/2572260). - Hitchman, Janet (1968). *Meeting for burial*. New York: Atheneum. [OCLC](/source/OCLC_(identifier)) [448549](https://search.worldcat.org/oclc/448549). - Hitchman, Janet (1976). *Such a strange lady: a biography of Dorothy L. Sayers*. New York: Avon. [OCLC](/source/OCLC_(identifier)) [1036868611](https://search.worldcat.org/oclc/1036868611). ## References 1. ^ [***a***](#cite_ref-King_1-0) [***b***](#cite_ref-King_1-1) [***c***](#cite_ref-King_1-2) [***d***](#cite_ref-King_1-3) Hitchman, Janet (1960). *The King of the Barbareens*. London: Putnam. [OCLC](/source/OCLC_(identifier)) [314777531](https://search.worldcat.org/oclc/314777531). 1. **[^](#cite_ref-2)** ["England & Wales, Civil Registration Death Index, 1916–2007 \[database on-line\]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations Inc., 2007"](https://www.ancestry.com). *Ancestry.com*. Retrieved 8 November 2018. 1. **[^](#cite_ref-3)** Bernikow, Louis (9 November 1975). [""Such a Strange Lady""](https://www.nytimes.com/1975/11/09/archives/such-a-strange-lady.html). *The New York Times*. 1. **[^](#cite_ref-4)** Heilbrun, Carolyn G. (Autumn 1982). ["Dorothy L. Sayers: Biography Between the Lines"](https://www.jstor.org/stable/41210881). *The American Scholar*. Washington D.C.: The Phi Beta Kappa Society. [JSTOR](/source/JSTOR_(identifier)) [41210881](https://www.jstor.org/stable/41210881). Retrieved 23 July 2023. (subscription required) 1. **[^](#cite_ref-5)** ["Miss Janet Hitchman"](https://www.thetimes.com/archive/article/1980-05-21/18/19.html). *The Times*. 21 May 1980. Retrieved 8 December 2018. 1. **[^](#cite_ref-6)** ["BBC Genome – Radio Four – 2 December 1980"](https://web.archive.org/web/20141019161928/http://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/schedules/radio4/fm/1980-12-02). Archived from [the original](https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/schedules/radio4/fm/1980-12-02) on 19 October 2014. Retrieved 8 December 2018. Authority control databases International ISNI VIAF FAST WorldCat National United States France BnF data Netherlands Israel Other Open Library Yale LUX --- Adapted from the Wikipedia article [Janet Hitchman](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Janet_Hitchman) by Wikipedia contributors ([contributor history](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Janet_Hitchman?action=history)). Available under [Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/). Changes may have been made.