By Bob Hicks
He was on no one’s list of the great novelists of the 20th century. Many literary critics barely knew he existed. He didn’t create an overarching epic of good and evil like J.K. Rowling, or cause squeals of vampire lust like Stephenie Meyer.
But somehow or other, while critical eyes were cast elsewhere, Brian Jacques sold more than 20 million copies of his books. Children of a certain age, and parents of children of a certain age, cherished him especially for the 22 novels in his Redwall series, which feature such characters as Martin the Warrior (a mouse), Mossflower (ditto), Slagar the Cruel (a fox), and Basil Stag Hare of the 47th Hare Border Rangers. Redwall, the first in the series, was published in 1986.
Jacques, a roustabout sort of fellow who had bounced from working-class job to working-class job before turning to the typewriter, died Saturday in his hometown of Liverpool. He was 71 and had just undergone emergency heart surgery. Margalit Fox has a good obituary here from the New York Times.