Writing a novel is not merely going on a shopping expedition across the border to an unreal land: it is hours and years spent in the factories, the streets, the cathedrals of the imagination.

New York: Braziller. 1984. "This Desirable Property" in New Zealand Listener 3 July 1964
1965.

These dramatic personal experiences feature prominently in Frame's autobiographical trilogy and director Jane Campion's popular film adaptation of the texts with recognisably autobiographical elements further resurfacing in many of her fictional publications. Janet Paterson Frame ONZ CBE (28 August 1924 – 29 January 2004) was a New Zealand author. Frame's celebrity is informed by her dramatic personal history as well as her literary career.