Jane Gaskell

Jane Gaskell is a British novelist born in 1941 in Lancashire, England. A child prodigy, she wrote her first novel, Strange Evil, at the age of fourteen and published it at sixteen. She is best known for the Atlan Saga, following the adventures of Cija through a richly imagined lost-world fantasy setting across The Serpent, Atlan, The City, and Some Summer Lands. She shared the Somerset Maugham Award in 1970. Gaskell worked for two decades as a journalist for the Daily Mail before later becoming a professional astrologer. Her early, prolific fantasy writing has drawn praise from later genre figures including China Mieville and John Clute.