She won the annual Carnegie Medal from the Library Association, recognising the year's best children's book by a British subject, both for Thunder and Lightnings (1976) and for Handles (1983).

Janet Marjorie Brisland was born in Welwyn Garden City, Hertfordshire and was raised and educated in Ashford in Kent.

The title of Thunder and Lightnings, a story set in rural Norfolk, is a reference to the British RAF jet fighter the English Electric Lightning and in turn inspired the name of a website documenting Cold War British military aircraft.

[5] Jan Mark was popular in Flanders, Belgium, where she participated in an educational project to stimulate teachers of English into using teenage fiction in the classroom.

[6] Jan Mark died suddenly at her home in Oxford from meningitis-related septicaemia in January 2006, aged 62.