{{Short description|New Zealand publisher, painter and art historian}} {{Use dmy dates|date=February 2024}} {{Use New Zealand English|date=March 2015}} thumb|Tinakore Village artist plaque '''Dame Janet Elaine Paul''' {{post-nominals|country=NZL|DNZM}} (née '''Wilkinson'''; 9 November 1919 – 28 July 2004) was a New Zealand publisher, painter and art historian,<ref name="poly">{{cite news |url= http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=9005209 |title=Farewell to some notable people|work=nzherald.co.nz |year=2011 |quote=Polymath is a word that applies to Dame Janet Paul, 84, who died after a rich, full life as publisher, painter and art historian. |access-date=15 September 2011}}</ref> based in Wellington.<ref name="Honours list"/><ref>{{cite web |url= http://collections.tepapa.govt.nz/Party.aspx?irn=1789 |title=Paul, Janet – Collections Online – Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa |work=collections.tepapa.govt.nz |year=2011 |access-date=7 June 2011}}</ref>
She was married to Blackwood Paul and they had a bookselling and publishing business together. Their publishing house, Blackwood and Janet Paul, specialised in New Zealand literature and society, publishing important works such as ''The Maori People in the Nineteen Sixties'' (1968), which included essays by eminent Māori scholars Bruce Biggs and Pei Te Hurinui Jones,<ref>{{Cite web |url=https://natlib.govt.nz/records/22001033?search%5Bi%5D%5Bsubject%5D%5B%5D=K%C4%81wanatanga&search%5Bi%5D%5Bsubject%5D%5B%5D=T%C4%81ngata+whenua&search%5Bpath%5D=items |title=The Māori people in the nineteen-sixties : a symposium / edited by Erik Schwimmer ; with the co-operation of John Forster, William Parker and James E. Ritchie. |access-date=2024-08-12 |website=natlib.govt.nz}}</ref> and Hone Tuwhare's first collection of poetry ''No Ordinary Sun'' (1964). After her husband's death, she was courted by Denis Glover, one of the poets they published.<ref>{{cite journal |url= https://nzetc.victoria.ac.nz/tm/scholarly/tei-Whi073Kota-t1-g1-t20.html#name-121319-mention |title=Denis Glover, 1912–1980 | NZETC |website=nzetc.org |year=2011 |volume=7 |issue=3 |doi=10.26686/knznq.v7i3.716 |quote=Having regained some of his former strength, he proceeded to lay siege to the affections of Janet Paul, the widow and business partner of his old friend Blackwood Paul (1908-65). Booksellers and publishers Blackwood and Janet Paul Ltd. had, by the mid 1960s, overtaken Caxton as New Zealand’s leading publishers of poetry, and in 1968 Janet had published Glover’s Sharp Edge Up: Verses and Satires. |access-date=15 September 2011 |last1=Shieff |first1=Sarah |doi-access=free }}</ref> From 1971 to 1980, she was art librarian at the Alexander Turnbull Library in Wellington.<ref>{{Cite book|title=Beyond expectations : fourteen New Zealand women write about their lives|last=Paul|first=Janet|publisher=Allen & Unwin/Port Nicholson Press|year=1986|isbn=0-86861-650-8|editor-last=Clark|editor-first=Margaret|location=Wellington, N.Z.|pages=3–19|chapter=Hints of becoming|oclc=15278262}}</ref>
Janet and Blackwood Paul had four daughters. Their eldest daughter, Joanna Margaret Paul, became a well-known New Zealand artist, poet, publisher and film-maker, while their second daughter, Charlotte Paul, is a doctor, epidemiologist and emeritus professor at the University of Otago. Their third daughter, Mary Paul is retired scholar of New Zealand literature, particularly the work of Robin Hyde.<ref>{{Cite web |date=2012-05-31 |title=Positivity from a dark history |url=https://www.nzherald.co.nz/aucklander/news/positivity-from-a-dark-history/EG26VE64DTG4ZTNZSXQNPLKB6I/ |access-date=2024-08-12 |website=NZ Herald |language=en-NZ}}</ref> Their youngest daughter, Jane Paul, was also an artist and worked at the National Film Archive and then Ngā Taonga Sound & Vision.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Death of Nga Taonga's Jane Paul, after a sudden illness |url=https://wellington.scoop.co.nz/?p=114147 |access-date=2024-08-12 |language=en}}</ref>
In the 1997 Queen's Birthday Honours, Paul was appointed a Dame Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit, for services to publishing, writing and painting.<ref name="Honours list">{{cite web |title=Queen's Birthday honours list 1997|url=https://www.dpmc.govt.nz/publications/queens-birthday-honours-list-1997 |date=2 June 1997 |publisher=Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet |access-date=15 July 2020}}</ref>
== References == {{Reflist}}
== External links == * [http://www.nzherald.co.nz/lifestyle/news/article.cfm?c_id=6&objectid=3582734 Obituary: Dame Janet Paul]
{{Authority control}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Paul, Janet Elaine}} Category:1919 births Category:2004 deaths Category:New Zealand artists Category:New Zealand publishers (people) Category:People from Wellington City Category:Dames Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit Category:Entrican family