Following years of psychiatric hospitalisation, Frame was scheduled for a lobotomy that was cancelled when, just days before the procedure, her debut publication of short stories was unexpectedly awarded a national literary prize.

[4] Many of her novels and short stories explore her childhood and psychiatric hospitalisation from a fictional perspective, and her award-winning three-volume autobiography was adapted into the film An Angel at My Table (1990), directed by Jane Campion.

Her father, George Frame, worked for the New Zealand Government Railways, and her mother Lottie (née Godfrey), served as a housemaid to the family of writer Katherine Mansfield.

As recounted in the first volume of her autobiographies, Frame's childhood was marred by the deaths of two of her adolescent sisters, Myrtle and Isabel, who drowned in separate incidents, and the epileptic seizures suffered by her brother George (referred to as "Geordie" and "Bruddie").

[8] In 1943, Frame began training as a teacher at the Dunedin College of Education, auditing courses in English, French and psychology at the adjacent University of Otago.

As a result, Frame began regular therapy sessions with junior lecturer John Money, to whom she developed a strong attraction,[11] and whose later work as a sexologist specialising in gender reassignment remains[update] controversial.

As a result, Frame was transferred from the local hospital's psychiatric ward to Seacliff Lunatic Asylum, a fabled and feared mental institution located 20 miles north of Dunedin.

[27][28] In an effort to alleviate the ill effects of her years spent in and out of psychiatric hospitals, Frame then began regular therapy sessions with psychiatrist Robert Hugh Cawley, who encouraged her to pursue her writing.

[29] Frame returned to New Zealand in 1963, though not before spending a short period of time living in rural north Suffolk (near the town of Eye) which gave her the inspiration for her 1965 novel The Adaptable Man.

[31] During this period Frame travelled extensively, occasionally to Europe, but principally to the United States, where she accepted residencies at the MacDowell and Yaddo artists' colonies.

[35] In the 1980s Frame authored three volumes of autobiography (To the Is-land, An Angel at my Table and The Envoy from Mirror City) which collectively traced the course of her life to her return to New Zealand in 1963.

Frame also held foreign membership of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and, in her native New Zealand, received two honorary doctorates as well as the status of cultural icon.

[56] Adding to the controversy, King openly admitted that he withheld information "that would have been a source of embarrassment and distress to her," and that he adopted publisher Christine Cole Catley's notion of "compassionate truth."

This advocates "a presentation of evidence and conclusions that fulfil the major objectives of biography, but without the revelation of information that would involve the living subject in unwarranted embarrassment, loss of face, emotional or physical pain, or a nervous or psychiatric collapse."

[60][61] A novella, Towards Another Summer, was also published posthumously, a work inspired by a weekend Frame spent with British journalist Geoffrey Moorhouse and his family.

In 2010, Gifted, a novel by New Zealand academic and former Frame biographer Patrick Evans, was published and subsequently shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writers' Prize.

[67] In 2013, Evans' novel was adapted for the stage, premiering at the Christchurch Arts Festival on 22 August 2013, followed by extended tour of New Zealand's north and south islands.

"[70][71][72] Gordon, who has also criticised Campion's film for inaccuracies in its portrayal of Frame,[73][74] asserted that Evans' theatrical adaptation presented an unfaithful view of her famous relative.