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Writer of racy and serious novels, cheeky reviews, in-depth articles, hopeful blogs,angry letters, polite notes, flashy cards, unread diaries.
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Background
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After 10 years as a teacher of art and craft in London schools, at age 29 I decided to brush up my English and enrolled as a part-time student at Birkbeck college, University of London. As a winner of the Frank J Newton Prize for the Best Student in English Literature for 1964, I was emboldened to apply for a Commonwealth Scholarship to Canada. To my surprise I was accepted and embarked on a PH D at the University of British Columbia. From Canada, I moved to the United States and taught for several years as Assistant Professor of English at the University of Maine. I was now regularly publishing academic papers and worked for some time on the MLA project on the definitive edition of the Works of Thackeray.
However, my then wife was unsettled in the States. She wanted our children to benefit from an English education and missed her family in the UK. So I took a humble post in a teachers' college in Nottinghamshire and soon gave up both scholarship and marriage. After a lone summer in New York and California, working on Thackeray manuscripts in 1978, I decided on a career change. I returned to the University of Leeds to take a Masters degree in Linguistics and English Language Teaching. This enabled me to travel to Morocco and Saudi Arabia, where I began working on my first novel.
Returning to the UK in 1988 with a new wife, I settled into joblessness and full-time writing. By the 1990's I had a fair track record - and two young children to keep me off the streets. I am now working on my latest project - a historical novel set in the London of the Restoration. The Confessions of Becky Sharp is slated for the Thackeray Bicentennial of 2011. Details of other novels, such as Paris Bound, a road novel featuring a culture-clashed romance between a professor and his student, and Punching Judy, the story of a girl boxer in 50's London, may be seen on www.freewebs.com/davejamesbooks
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Birth Place
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London, UK
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Accomplishments
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Frank J Newton Prize, 1964
Canadian Commonwealth Scholarship, 1965-69
British Academy Fellowship, 1978
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Additional Information
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Speaker and Originator of the Self-publishing Workshop, Winchester Writers Conference, 2008
'The War to End All Wars,' Survey of letters, autobiographies and novels about WW1, published with Ligaya James in newbooks, Nov/Dec 2008
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Contact Information
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David James
2 Leslie Gardens
sutton sm2 6qu
uk
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Contact Author: David L James
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Favorite Links
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davejamesbooks
an ongoing site to which you are welcome, and where you can contact me.
Paris Bound
selected pages available online
Punching Judy
selected passages and summary
The Confessions of Becky Sharp
first 3 chapters available to read on the above site.
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