Correction Appended

Janet Frame, whose vividly romantic explorations of madness and language in novels, poetry and autobiography propelled her to worldwide attention, died yesterday in Dunedin, New Zealand. She was 79.

Dunedin Hospital said the cause was acute leukemia, The Associated Press reported.

In 1973 she legally changed her surname to Clutha, after the river south of Oamaru, her childhood home, but continued to write under the name Janet Frame.

Ms. Frame's work used her own disturbing life to weave fictional nightmares that reflected, in her words, the ''homelessness of self.'' After a suicide attempt she spent eight years in mental hospitals in New Zealand, receiving 200 electroshock treatments. She was about to have a lobotomy when a hospital official read that she had won a literary prize. She was released.

Later, a panel of psychiatrists determined that she had never had schizophrenia. In the sort of bitterly perceptive, highly personalized twist that infuses much of her writing, that news did not please her.