And Joan Aiken, who also wrote for older teen to adult under Joan Aiken Hodges
There's a rather amusing looking website here: http://joanaiken.com/pages/books.html
I couldn't let this pass me by. Joan Aiken and JANE Aiken Hodge are sisters, they have an author brother named John and their father was the poet Conrad Aiken. Joan Aiken first book was The Wolves of Willoughby Chase with very witty humor that I still remember the matter of fact way they ride in a sleigh and the servants bonk the wolves on the head when they get too close. She developed this into an alternative history series, she wrote many children's books often with supernatural or mythic themes but also thrillers and droll historical romances with a lot of feminist themes. She also wrote a series of "sequels" to Jane Austen's books.
Her sister Jane fully shared her wit and irony, although she is primarily known for writing ironic regency/historical romances such as Maulever Hall (from goodreads.com "It is the perfect gothic: heroine with amnesia, dark, brooding hero, nameless villain, child in jeopardy, forbidding dwelling...")which is truly as much of a send up as Joan's Wolves series of the tropes of popular fiction. I also read and reread The Adventurers and Watch the Wall My Darling. Over the years she started writing more and more grim historical based novels so her earliest novels (romps) were definitely my faves. She wrote amazing biographies of Georgette Heyer and Jane Austen. Jane never wrote for children.
