Frances Hardinge

Frances Hardinge (b. 1973, London) is a British children’s and young adult novelist whose work — wildly inventive, politically acute, and written in prose of considerable literary ambition — has established her as one of the most important children’s writers working in English. Her novels are fantasies, but they are fantasies about power: who controls language, who controls knowledge, who controls the stories that communities tell about themselves. She writes for young readers with the same intellectual seriousness that Philip Pullman brings to children’s fiction, and her best novels are fully as rich and complex as anything published for adults.

Life and Career

Hardinge was born in London and grew up in various parts of England. She studied English at the University of Oxford — an education in close reading, literary history, and the English language’s capacity for precision and play that is audible in every sentence she writes. She has worked in the software industry, and the relationship between language and systems — the way rules create possibilities and constraints — informs her worldbuilding.

Her debut, Fly by Night (2005), won the Branford Boase Award (for the best debut children’s novel in the UK) and introduced the hallmarks of her fiction: a heroine who is fierce, intelligent, and refuses to defer to authority; a world that is elaborately imagined and internally consistent; a plot that is driven by political intrigue rather than quest-adventure; and a prose style that combines wit, precision, and a love of words that is itself thematic — Hardinge’s worlds are places where language matters, where naming things gives you power over them.

Major Works

Fly by Night (2005) is set in a fractured fantasy kingdom called the Fractured Realm, where printed words are controlled by the Stationers’ Guild — one guild controls printing, another controls bookbinding, and books are licensed, regulated, and occasionally burned. The heroine, Mosca Mye — a twelve-year-old girl named after a fly — navigates this world with a stolen goose, an unreliable con man named Eponymous Clent, and a ferocious appetite for reading in a world that fears readers. Its sequel, Fly Trap (2011, published as Twilight Robbery in the UK), continues Mosca’s adventures.

The Lie Tree (2015) is set in Victorian England and follows fourteen-year-old Faith Sunderly, whose father, a naturalist, dies under suspicious circumstances on a remote island. Investigating his death, Faith discovers his secret: a tree that feeds on lies — the more widely a lie is believed, the more the tree grows — and produces fruit that, when eaten, reveals a hidden truth. The novel is both a mystery and a fierce argument about women’s exclusion from science and knowledge in Victorian society. Faith must lie to discover the truth, and the novel’s moral complexity — the way truth and deception are intertwined — is handled with remarkable sophistication.

The Lie Tree won the 2015 Costa Book of the Year — the first children’s book to win the overall prize (not just the children’s category) since Philip Pullman’s The Amber Spyglass in 2001. The win was widely celebrated as validation that children’s literature could be as formally and intellectually ambitious as adult fiction.

A Skinful of Shadows (2017) — set during the English Civil War, about a girl who can harbour the ghosts of the dead within her — and Deeplight (2019) — about a boy in a world of drowned gods whose remains are harvested for their supernatural properties — continue her exploration of power, knowledge, and the control of dangerous forces.

Unraveller (2022) — about a boy who can unravel curses and a girl who instinctively curses anyone who wrongs her — explores the relationship between justice and revenge, between the impulse to curse and the impulse to heal.

Themes and Critical Standing

Hardinge’s fiction is fundamentally about epistemology — about how people know what they know, who controls the flow of information, and what happens when knowledge is suppressed, distorted, or monopolised. Her fantasy worlds are not escapist: they are political systems in which language, knowledge, and storytelling are instruments of power, and her heroines are girls who refuse to accept the stories they are told.

She has been compared to Philip Pullman (for the political ambition and moral seriousness of her children’s fiction), to Diana Wynne Jones (for the inventiveness of her worldbuilding), and to Terry Pratchett (for her wit and her love of the way language works). Her prose is more ornate than any of these predecessors — she writes with a density and a delight in wordplay that rewards careful reading.

Hardinge is widely admired by critics and fellow writers but remains less commercially successful than her reputation deserves. Her novels are frequently praised as “the best children’s books you haven’t read” — a backhanded compliment that reflects the ongoing undervaluation of children’s literature within the broader literary culture.

Key Works

• Fly by Night (2005) — Branford Boase Award
• The Lie Tree (2015) — Costa Book of the Year
• A Skinful of Shadows (2017)
• Deeplight (2019)
• Unraveller (2022)

Collecting Hardinge

Fly by Night (2005, Macmillan UK / HarperCollins US) first UK editions bring $30–$60 — scarce as a pre-fame debut. The Lie Tree (2015, Macmillan UK) first editions bring $20–$40, with the Costa win sustaining interest.

Hardinge signs at UK literary festivals and bookshop events. UK editions (Macmillan) are the true firsts for most titles. Her novels have not yet crossed into the expensive collectible territory, making her an affordable and potentially undervalued collect for a writer whose critical reputation is very high.