Jalna (novel series)

Jalna is a 16-book series of novels by the Canadian writer Mazo de la Roche.

Jalna

Author	Mazo de la Roche
Language	English
Series	Jalna (or Whiteoaks)
Publisher	Little, Brown and Company
Publication date	June 1927
Publication place	Canada
Media type	Print
ISBN	0-316-18000-9

Jalna is the name of the fictional manor house in which the Whiteoak family lives. The name comes from Jalna, a city in west-central India, where there was a British garrison. In a prequel novel, the house is built by a retired officer of the British army who served in India. Jalna is partly based on Benares, a house in Mississauga, Canada. Benares was built in the late 1850s for a retired officer of the British army who had served in India, James B. Harris. It once occupied a larger estate, upon which de la Roche lived for a time. "Benares" is an alternate name of Varanasi, a city in India which had a British garrison.

The story

Spanning 1854 to 1954, the Jalna series tells the story of the Whiteoak family who lived on a southern Ontario estate. The novels were not written in sequential order. Each can be read as an independent story.

There are similarities and as well as differences in the experiences of the Whiteoak family and de la Roche's. While the lives and successes of the Whiteoaks rise and fall, there remained for them the steadiness of the family manor, known as Jalna. De la Roche's family endured the illness of her mother, the perpetual job searches of her father, and the adoption of her orphaned cousin while being moved 17 times. Her family did work a farm for a few years for a wealthy man who owned the farm for a hobby. Several critics believe that Finch from Finch's Fortune (1932) is a reflection of de la Roche herself. The names of many of the characters were taken from gravestones in a Newmarket, Ontario cemetery.

Production

Jalna, first published in 1927, won the Atlantic Monthly Press's first $10,000 Atlantic Prize Novel award. De la Roche went on to write about the Whiteoak family for the next 30 years, establishing a place for herself in popular Canadian literature. The Jalna series has been translated into many languages and was adapted for stage, radio, and television. John Cromwell directed the 1935 film adaptation, Jalna, released by RKO Radio Pictures. In 1972, the story was adapted for television and aired on the CBC as The Whiteoaks of Jalna.

By 1961, when de la Roche died, the series had sold more than eleven million copies in 193 English and 92 foreign editions.

The books

Title	Order	Publisher	Year	Notes
Building of Jalna	1	Little, Brown	1944
Morning at Jalna	2	Little, Brown	1960
Mary Wakefield	3	Little, Brown	1949
Young Renny	4	Little, Brown	1935
Whiteoak Heritage	5	Little, Brown	1935
Whiteoak Brothers	6	Little, Brown	1953
Jalna	7	Little, Brown	1927
Whiteoaks of Jalna	8	Little, Brown	1929	Published as Whiteoaks, Macmillan, 1929
Finch's Fortune	9	Little, Brown	1932
The Master of Jalna	10	Little, Brown	1933
Whiteoak Harvest	11	Little, Brown	1936
Wakefield's Course	12	Little, Brown	1941
Return to Jalna	13	Little, Brown	1946
Renny's Daughter	14	Little, Brown	1951
Variable Winds at Jalna	15	Little, Brown	1954
Centenary at Jalna	16	Little, Brown	1954

Film and television adaptations

• Jalna, 1935, RKO Radio Pictures film
• The Whiteoak Chronicles: The Building of Jalna, 1955, BBC television Film
• The Whiteoaks of Jalna, 1972, CBC television drama miniseries

External links

• Jalna Series by Mazo de La Roche at Faded Page
• Benares Historic House, Mississauga, Ontario