Jane Johnson (writer)

Biography

Jane Johnson was educated at Liskeard Grammar School. She has a master's degree in Old Icelandic language and literature.

From 1984 to 1992, she was the editor responsible for the J.R.R. Tolkien list at George Allen & Unwin Publishers and commissioned both John Howe and Alan Lee to illustrate Tolkien's work, including Lee's acclaimed illustrated Tolkien-centenary edition of The Lord of the Rings. The publishing house was later bought by HarperCollins, where she remains a Publishing Director working across the Voyager fantasy and science fiction list and crime/thrillers. Her authors there include George R.R. Martin, Raymond E. Feist, Robin Hobb, Dean Koontz, Stuart MacBride, Jonathan Freedland, Tom Knox as S.K. Tremayne, and Mark Lawrence.

With M. John Harrison she wrote the four-volume "Gabriel King" series – the "Tag, the Cat" animal stories as catalogued by ISFDB (1997 to 2002).

As "Jude Fisher", she worked with cast and crew to create six Visual Companion books (2001 to 2014) for the film trilogies The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit, Peter Jackson's adaptations of Tolkien.

Johnson traveled to North Africa in 2005 to investigate a family legend about the abduction of a family in 1625 from a Cornish church by Barbary pirates, and there met the man who was later that year to become her husband, a Berber tribesman. She now splits her time between the UK and a small town in the Anti-Atlas Mountains. Her first adult mainstream novel was The Tenth Gift, based on the Barbary pirate story. This was followed by a desert epic, set in the Sahara among the Tuareg nomads, The Salt Road. The Sultan's Wife (2012) is set in the 17th-century court of Sultan Moulay Ismail and tells the story of two slaves, an African chieftain's son Nus-Nus and an Anglo-Dutch woman Alys. It also includes an account of the embassy sent from the Moroccan sultan to the court of King Charles II which is documented in John Evelyn's Diary. Her novels are translated and sold in more than 20 countries.. Living part of the year in Morocco, Johnson has made good use of her acquired knowledge of Moroccan culture and history as a background for the novels.

Her magical fantasy novels for children include The Eidolon Chronicles (Legends of the Shadow World in a US omnibus edition): The Secret Country, The Shadow World and Dragon's Fire. Two single volume stories followed: Maskmaker in 2010 and Goldseekers in 2011.

As Jane Johnson

For children:

1. The Secret Country (2005)
2. Shadow World (2006)
3. Dragon's Fire (2008)

For adults, three novels set in Morocco:

one novel set in Syria"

one novel set in Spain

As Jude Fisher

1. Sorcery Rising (Earthlight, 2002)
2. Wild Magic (2004)
3. Rose of the World (2005)

As Gabriel King

This series of animal stories by Johnson and M. John Harrison as Gabriel King was published by Century (British hardcover editions) and other Random House divisions.

1. The Wild Road (1997)
2. The Golden Cat (1998)
3. The Knot Garden (2000)
4. Nonesuch (2002)

all being reissued by Head of Zeus 2017