Jane Duncan


Jane Duncan was the pseudonym of Scottish writer Elizabeth Jane Cameron, best known for her My Friends series of semi-autobiographical novels. She also wrote four novels under the name of her principal heroine Janet Sandison, and some children's books.

Biography

Elizabeth Jane Cameron was born in Renton, West Dunbartonshire on 10 March 1910 and brought up in the Scottish Lowlands where her father was a police officer, attending Lenzie Academy in the area of Lenzie, East Dunbartonshire, but much of her childhood was spent in the Highlands on the Black Isle in Easter Ross, on her grandparents' croft "The Colony". She graduated in English from the University of Glasgow and did various secretarial jobs before serving as a Flight Officer, WAAF during World War II alongside the choreographer Frederick Ashton. She afterwards lived in Jamaica for ten years, returning to Jemimaville, near "The Colony", in 1958 as a widow.
In 1959 Duncan became something of a publishing sensation when Macmillan Publishers announced that it would be publishing seven of her manuscripts, the first to be produced being My Friends the Miss Boyds. The nineteenth and last of the series, My Friends George and Tom, was published in 1976. The biographical background to her writing is given in her Letter from Reachfar .
In her later years she lived in Jemimaville in the Scottish Highlands, where she wrote her later novels. She died there on 20 October 1976.

Writing

The "Reachfar" series is narrated by Janet Sandison and follows her life from the World War I period through to the 1960s, depicting the people she encounters and showing how her crofting upbringing influences her in whatever society and geographical location she finds herself.
In the four-novel Jean Robertson sequence, notionally written by Sandison, the heroine and part-narrator moves from bleak beginnings in the town of "Lochfoot" to become a house-servant in the interwar period, influencing for good the lives of many around her.
The five-book "Camerons" series for children have a contemporary setting and are particularly notable for including the young Iain who has learning difficulties. Camerons on the Train was filmed as The Camerons.

Reprints

To mark the centenary of Jane Duncan's birth, Millrace Books have re-published My Friends the Miss Boyds. The new edition of My Friends the Miss Boyds was launched at Waterstone’s in Inverness on Thursday 24 June 2010.