Janet Frame brings the skill of an extraordinary novelist and poet to these vivid and haunting recollections. Gathered here in a single edition are the three parts of Janet Frame's autobiography. From a childhood and adolescence spent in a materially poor but intellectually intense railway family, through life as a student and years of incarceration in mental hospitals (essentially for wanting to pursue a career as a poet), followed eventually by her entry into the saving world of writers and the 'Mirror City' that sustains them. This is not just the records of a life but also the flourishing of a writer's career.