This study investigates how Janet Frame weaves together literary sources from her extensive reading to create a web of intertextual relationships. Patricia Neville traces Frame’s passion for books beginning with her childhood and earliest published work in the Otago Daily Times. Drawing on new research and through close readings of Frame’s novels, she discusses the effects of Frame’s borrowings from the Bible and Shakespeare and from writing from New Zealand, Britain, France, and the USA. A fascinating read not only for scholars, but for all admirers of Janet Frame’s fiction.