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From: "Peter_McCrae" <>
Subject: O'NEIL: Judith Beatrice Julia Eccleshere Lyall O'Neill-25/3/2006
Date: Sun, 14 May 2006 13:12:24 +0100


Judith O'Neill
(Filed: 11/05/2006)


Judith Beatrice Julia Eccleshere Lyall O'Neill

Judith O'Neill, who has died aged 75, was the author of nine novels for
children, all reflecting her own background as an Australian exiled in
Britain.

Her ancestors, transported to Van Dieman's Land in the 19th century, made a
new life in Victoria. Their experiences, together with her own childhood
memories, provided a deep well of inspiration on which she drew in her
fiction.


As Julia Eccleshare, her editor at Hamish Hamilton, wrote, Judith O'Neill
was motivated not by "the false quest for notoriety which is driving so many
of today's authors, but by the genuine desire to get a story heard and to
capture for a new generation a way of growing up that was disappearing".

Judith Beatrice Lyall was born in Melbourne on June 30 1930. She was not a
strong child, and soon her family moved to hot, dry Mildura for the benefit
of her health.

Her first novel, Jess and The River Kids, evokes this sunbaked landscape
through the eyes of a nine-year-old.

Judith Lyall read English at Melbourne University; her great love of poetry
as well as of the Bible and the English Hymnal gave resonance to her prose.

She came to England on a Rotary Scholarship to train at the Institute of
Education in London. She then returned to Melbourne where, in 1954, she
married the theologian John O'Neill, at that time teaching at Ormond
College.

She adored being a wife and mother, and upheld an ideal of domesticity and
marital harmony which in no way compromised her belief in educational and
professional advancement for women.

John O'Neill, in turn, was a devoted husband. The fact that his wife became
a Catholic whereas he was a minister of the United Reformed Church created
no rift, so deep was their mutual respect.

In 1964 the family left Australia for good, when John O'Neill took up a post
as Professor of New Testament at Westminster College, Cambridge; his wife
became Head of English at St Mary's Convent School.

In the 1960s she edited a series of critical anthologies of the great poets,
but it was not until she stopped teaching in the early 1980s that she began
to write.

Jess and the River Kids (1984) was followed by Stringybark Summer (1985);
Deepwater (1987); The Message (1989); So Far From Skye (1992); Hearing
Voices (1996); Spindle River (1998); Leaving The Island (1998) and Whirlwind
(1999).

Her prose was simple and unaffected, infused with a strong sense of place
and profound understanding of character.

She also wrote a non-fiction account of her convict ancestry, Transported To
Van Dieman's Land.

One of her ancestors had been convicted for stealing tools; Judith O'Neill
always stoutly maintained that her forbear was innocent of this crime and
had been framed by his co-accused.

In 1985 the O'Neills moved to Edinburgh, where John O'Neill became Professor
of New Testament at New College. They were adventurous, going on rigorous
camping expeditions into their early seventies.

Judith O'Neill's husband predeceased her in 2003. She died on March 25 and
is survived by their three daughters.




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