English author Alan Garner is rooted in the language, places, and myths of his birthplace. Born in Congleton, Cheshire, on October 17, 1934, to a family of country people and craftsmen, he grew up in the village of Alderley Edge, where his ancestors had lived for generations. His village, now a suburb of Manchester, took its name from a great, wooded escarpment, a landmark on the Cheshire plain. Garner spent many childhood days exploring the land around Alderley Edge and getting to know the people of the countryside. Several severe illnesses, including a year long bout with meningitis, forced him to spend months in bed, where he read extensively and developed his imagination.

Garner attended Manchester Grammar School, then one of the most demanding schools in the country. There he found that home and school did not mix, that his dialect and even his way of thinking were not acceptable at school. Nevertheless, he rose to the challenge of the competitive environment and became a champion sprinter. After service in the Royal Artillery, he became the first in his family to attend a university. He studied classical languages at Magdalen College, Oxford. He left before taking his degree, but not before deciding to devote his life to writing. Returning to Cheshire, Garner moved into a medieval timbered house only a few miles from where he grew up. Here he has raised his own family.

The sense of dislocation and alienation that resulted from Garner's background and educational experience became a predominant theme in his fiction. At the same time, his love of the Cheshire landscape, folklore, and dialects figures prominently in his works. As his career progressed, he also became an expert on the history, prehistory, geography, and geology of the area.

The Weirdstone of Brisingamen and The Moon of Gomrath, Garner's first two novels, are shaped by the environment of Alderley Edge. His third book, Elidor, is set in Manchester and its suburbs; the house where the main characters live is the house where Garner grew up. Once, while exploring Alderley Edge, he found a stone axe, the centerpiece of Red Shift. His own ancestors make up the family in The Stone Book. Garner's interest in mythology and folklore has brought the Mabinogian, Arthurian tales, Scottish ballads, and other folk material into his stories; and his ear for language has made the treatment of dialect particularly strong in the later novels.

Like the work of many novelists, Garner's is autobiographical. His subjects are sometimes so mature that, after The Owl Service, critics and reviewers began to discuss whether Garner was still a children's writer. An idiosyncratic, unpredictable author, he is constantly experimenting with new techniques.

The tension between Garner's background and education seems to have been resolved in the Stone Book quartet. Many readers find this series to contain his finest writing, and, like his other works, it is enjoyed by adults and young people alike.

In 1967 The Owl Service won the Carnegie Medal for the year's outstanding children's book published in the United Kingdom and in 1968 the Guardian Award (given by the English newspaper The Guardian) for the year's outstanding work of fiction for children by a British author.