Jan Morris

78
Jan Morris bigraphy, stories - Historians

Jan Morris : biography

2 October 1926 –

Jan Morris, CBE (born James Humphrey Morris, 2 October 1926, Clevedon, Somerset, England) is a Welsh historian, author and travel writer. She is known particularly for the Pax Britannica trilogy (1968-78), a history of the British Empire, and for portraits of cities, notably Oxford, Venice, Trieste, Hong Kong, and New York City.

Born in England of an English mother and Welsh father, Morris was educated at Lancing College, West Sussex, and Christ Church, Oxford, but now considers herself Welsh. She is a transsexual woman and was published under her birth name until 1972, when she transitioned from living as male to living as female.

Partial bibliography

Non-fiction

Travel

  • Coast to Coast (published in the U.S. as As I Saw the U.S.A; 1956: winner of the 1957 Cafe Royal Prize)
  • Sultan in Oman (1957)
  • The Market in Seleukia (1957)
  • South African Winter (1958)
  • The Hashemite Kings (1959)
  • Venice (1960: winner of the 1961 Heinemann Award)
  • The Presence of Spain (1964)
  • Oxford (1965)
  • The Great Port: A Passage through New York (1969)
  • The Venetian Empire (1980)
  • A Venetian Bestiary (1982)
  • The Matter of Wales (1984)
  • Spain (1988)
  • Hong Kong (1988)
  • Sydney (1992)
  • Trieste and the Meaning of Nowhere (2001)
  • The World: Life and Travel 1950-2000 (2003)
  • Contact! A Book of Encounters (2010)
    • Excerpts from Contact! are frequently featured on a Jan Morris .
  • Spain (1964)

Essays

  • The Road to Huddersfield: A Journey to Five Continents (1963)
  • The Outriders: A Liberal View of Britain (1963)
  • Cities (1963)
  • Places (1972)
  • Travels (1976)
  • Destinations (1980)
  • Wales; The First Place (1982, reprinted 1998)
  • Journeys (1984)
  • Among the Cities (1985)
  • Locations (1992)
  • O Canada! (1992)
  • Contact! A Book of Glimpses (2009)

History

  • The Pax Britannica Trilogy:
    • Heaven’s Command: An Imperial Progress (1973). Book 1. Covering the period 1837 to 1897
    • Pax Britannica: The Climax of Empire (1968). Book 2.
    • Farewell the Trumpets: An Imperial Retreat (1978). Book 3. Covering the period 1897 to 1965
  • Stones of Empire: Buildings of the Raj (1983) (by Jan Morris with photographs by Simon Winchester)

Biography

  • Fisher’s Face (1995)

Memoir

  • Conundrum, US: Harcourt Brace (1974) (personal narrative of transsexualism)
  • Wales, The First Place (1982)
  • Pleasures of a Tangled Life (1989)
  • Trieste and the Meaning of Nowhere (2001)
  • A Writer’s House in Wales (2002)
  • "Herstory" (1999)

Other

  • Coronation Everest (1958)

Fiction

Novels

  • Last Letters from Hav (1985: shortlisted for the 1985 Booker Prize for Fiction)
  • Hav (2006; shortlisted for the 2007 Arthur C Clarke Award)

Short stories

  • The Upstairs Donkey, and Other Stolen Stories (1961)

Miscellaneous (publisher’s dates not checked)

  • Manhattan ’45 (hardcover 1987, paperback 1998)
  • Fifty Years of Europe: An Album (1997) – published in 2006 as Europe – An Intimate Journey
  • The Oxford Book of Oxford (editor)
  • The Matter of Wales: Epic Views of a Small Country
  • Lincoln: A Foreigner’s Quest (2001)
  • Our First Leader
  • Thrilling Cities written by Ian Fleming. Jan Morris provided the introduction for the 2009 edition published by Ian Fleming Publications.