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thoroughly transgressive writers around.
    All these qualities—her imaginative fertility, her range, her stamina, the breadth of her human sympathy and understanding, her command of plotting and of the other technicalities of the writer’s craft, along with her unquenchable curiosity about life and people—have given Diana a unique place, not just in literature for children or within speculative fiction, but in modern literature generally.
    Diana did not write in a way that drew attention to her writing; she was more interested in the story that she wished to tell. However, anyone who met Diana or heard her speak will know that, for all the qualities evident in her work, she was also a keen thinker about writing. Her Tough Guide to Fantasyland is a piece of literary criticism disguised as a guidebook, and her fiction is shot through with insights into the power of words and the importance of their judicious deployment. Fire and Hemlock has important things to say about influence and originality, while “Carol Oneir’s Hundredth Dream” and Archer’s Goon make telling points about writer’s block. Besides these oblique contributions, however, she produced numerous essays and articles, as well as giving talks at conventions, schools, and conferences. The current volume gathers together much of that material. The wife, mother, and sister of professional academics, Diana was nevertheless ambivalent about the technical language of literary criticism, but as this volume demonstrates, she was a talented critic with important insights into her own work, that of other writers, and the creative process.
    Diana’s essays and talks in this volume were written during the years from 1978 to 2008 and are arranged in a running order chosen by Diana. This is not strictly chronological but does reflect the development of her ideas. As she points out in her preface, in a collection such as this it is inevitable that certain anecdotes and experiences are mentioned more than once, since she recounted them to different audiences in various articles and talks. A recurrent topic is Diana’s childhood, a time when she learned the strangeness of human behavior and the arbitrariness of power, and when (living a life of neglect and emotional abuse with her two younger sisters) she began to craft imaginative worlds for her own benefit and theirs. Here too we see her beginning to piece together her ideas about the nature and purpose of fantasy, as symbolized in the two gardens kept by her parents—one dull and quotidian, the other magical, bee haunted, and securely locked. These symbols and experiences appear at various times throughout the volume, as does evidence of her early love of fantasy, epitomized in her preference for the “Piper at the Gates of Dawn” chapter in The Wind in the Willows , which was censored by her mother as being too fanciful. Given the occasional nature of the pieces in this volume, we have performed only a minimum of editing, leaving such reiteration of material as there is to speak naturally within its varying contexts. We hope that the result will be a cumulative appreciation of the role these ideas and experiences held in Diana’s thought.
    For all their autobiographical content, the pieces in this volume are primarily concerned with writing. Some are about the art and craft of writing in general, and contain either observations about Diana’s writing life, or else practical advice to those who might wish to take up the profession. These include “The Children in the Wood,” “When I Won the Guardian Award,” “A Talk About Rules,” “Answers to Some Questions,” “A Whirlwind Tour of Australia,” “Some Hints on Writing,” “Characterization: Advice for Young Writers,” and, in a more oblique way, “Our Hidden Gifts.” Two others, “The Halloween Worms” and “A Day Visiting Schools,”