In an interview published in 1999, Jennifer Johnston, who has died aged 95, defined the way she went about creating her luminous works of fiction. “I’m not an innovative sort of writer,” she said. “I’m always working with fairly strict, rather old-fashioned terms of what the novel means to me. And I’m working on a very, very small canvas.”
This is perhaps an over-modest appraisal of her modus operandi. In fact, she never balked at tackling large subjects, or at bringing a new and invigorating sensibility to bear on old themes. Dubbed an Irish “big house” novelist when she first appeared on the literary scene, Johnston soon made it clear that whatever she may have owed to her predecessors such as Maria Edgeworth or Elizabeth Bowen, she possessed a sure and delicate touch that was all her own.
