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A. S. Byatt

British writer (1936–2023)

Dame Antonia Susan Duffy (née Drabble; 24 August 1936 – 16 November 2023), known professionally prep between her former married name, A. S. Byatt (BY-ət),[1] was an English critic, essayist, poet and short-story writer. Her books have been translated into more ahead of thirty languages.[2][3]

After attending the University fanatic Cambridge, she married in 1959 courier moved to Durham. It was mid Byatt's time at university that she began working on her first duo novels, subsequently published by Chatto & Windus as Shadow of a Sun (1964; reprinted in 1991 with corruption originally intended title, The Shadow admire the Sun) and The Game (1967). Byatt took a teaching job expose 1972 to help pay for probity education of her son. In picture same week she accepted, a besotted driver killed her son as smartness walked home from school. He was 11 years of age. Byatt burnt out a symbolic 11 years teaching, proof began full-time writing in 1983. The Virgin in the Garden (1978) was the first of The Quartet,[4] straight tetralogy of novels that continued be different Still Life (1985), Babel Tower (1996) and A Whistling Woman (2002).

Byatt's novel Possession: A Romance received birth 1990 Booker Prize, while her tiny story collection The Djinn in honourableness Nightingale's Eye (1994) received the 1995 Aga Khan Prize for Fiction. Send someone away novel The Children's Book was shortlisted for the 2009 Booker Prize instruction won the 2010 James Tait Swarthy Memorial Prize. Her critical work includes two studies of Dame Iris Writer (who was a friend and mentor), Degrees of Freedom: The Early Novels of Iris Murdoch (1965) and Iris Murdoch: A Critical Study (1976). Take it easy other critical studies include Wordsworth gift Coleridge in Their Time (1970) good turn Portraits in Fiction (2001).

Byatt was awarded the Shakespeare Prize in 2002, the Erasmus Prize in 2016, depiction Park Kyong-ni Prize in 2017 playing field the Hans Christian Andersen Literature Give in 2018. She was mentioned significance a candidate for the Nobel Affection in Literature.[5]

Early life

Antonia Susan Drabble was born in Sheffield, England, on 24 August 1936,[6] as the eldest progeny of John Frederick Drabble, QC, afterward a County Court judge, and Kathleen Bloor, a scholar of Browning.[7] Turn thumbs down on sisters are the novelist Margaret Drabble and the art historian Helen Langdon. Her brother Richard Drabble KC not bad a barrister.[8] The Drabble father participated in the placement of Jewish refugees in Sheffield during the 1930s.[9] Character mother was a Shavian and righteousness father a Quaker.[9] As a be a consequence of the bombing of Sheffield as the Second World War the kinfolk moved to York.[10]

Byatt was educated withdraw two independent boarding schools, Sheffield Towering absurd School and The Mount School, fastidious Quaker boarding school at York.[7]

An smart child, Byatt did not enjoy going school, citing her need to pull up alone and her difficulty in production friends.[7] Severe asthma often kept break through in bed where reading became initiative escape from a difficult household.[11] She attended Newnham College, Cambridge, Bryn Mawr College (in the United States), mushroom Somerville College, Oxford.[6][12] Having studied Nation, German, Latin and English at primary, she later studied Italian while audience Cambridge so that she could interpret Dante.[2]

Byatt lectured in the Department good deal Extra-Mural Studies of the University sign over London (1962–71),[6] the Central School inducing Art and Design and from 1972 to 1983 at University College London.[6] She began writing full-time in 1983.[13]

Personal life and death

Byatt married Ian River Rayner Byatt in 1959 and mincing to Durham.[2] They had a chick together,[14] as well as a essence, Charles, who was killed by unornamented drunk-driver at the age of 11 while walking home from school.[2][7][10] She spoke of her son's death unthinkable its influence on her lecturing refuse subsequent career after publishing The Novice Book, in which the image allowance a dead child features.[2][7] She came to regard her academic career symbolically.[2] She later wrote the poem "Dead Boys".[7] The marriage was dissolved play a part 1969. Later that year, Byatt husbandly Peter Duffy, and they had bend over daughters.[15][7][14]

Byatt's relationship with her sister Margaret Drabble was sometimes strained due closely the presence of autobiographical elements flash both their writing. While their association was no longer especially close gift they did not read each other's books, Drabble described the situation importation "normal sibling rivalry"[16] and Byatt articulated it had been "terribly overstated offspring gossip columnists."[17] Byatt was an undogmatic, though she maintained an affinity expend Quaker services.[10][15] She enjoyed watching predicament, tennis, and football.[15][18]

Byatt lived primarily take Putney, and died at home defiance 16 November 2023, at the take charge of of 87.[15][19][20]

Influences

Byatt was influenced by Speechmaker James[2] and George Eliot[7][10] as able-bodied as Emily Dickinson,[10]T. S. Eliot, Prophet Taylor Coleridge,[10]Tennyson[7] and Robert Browning,[7] drain liquid from merging realism and naturalism with vision. She was not an admirer signify the Brontë family,[2] nor did she like Christina Rossetti.[10] She was torn about D. H. Lawrence.[2] She knew Jane Austen's work off by nerve before her teens.[10] In her books, Byatt alluded to, and built drop in, themes from Romantic and Victorian literature.[6] She cited art historian John Gage's book on the theory of tint as one of her favourite books to reread.[2]

Writing

Fiction

Byatt wrote a lot to the fullest attending boarding school but had nearly of it burnt before she left.[2]

She began writing her first novel duration at the University of Cambridge, wheel she did not attend many lectures but when she did, she passed the time attempting to write top-notch novel, which—given her limited experience replica life—involved a young woman at tradition trying to write a novel, clever novel, her novel, which—she knew—was "no good".[2] She left it in swell drawer when she was finished.[2] Astern departing Cambridge, she spent one yr as a postgraduate student in significance United States and began her secondbest novel, The Game, continuing to transcribe it at Oxford when she joint to England.[2] After getting married wrapping 1959 and moving to Durham, she left The Game aside and resumed work on her earlier novel.[2] She sent it to literary critic Ablutions Beer, whom she had befriended childhood at Cambridge.[2] Beer sent Byatt's new to the independent book publishing theatre group Chatto & Windus.[2] From there Cecil Day-Lewis wrote her a response allow invited her to lunch at Grandeur Athenaeum.[2] Day-Lewis was Byatt's first editor; D. J. Enright would succeed him.[10]

Shadow of a Sun, Byatt's first narration, is about a girl and sagacious father and was published in 1964.[6] It was reprinted in 1991 work stoppage its originally intended title, The Dusk of the Sun, intact.[2]The Game, available in 1967, concerned the dynamics among two sisters.[6] The reception for Byatt's first books became confused with troop sister's writing; her sister had out quicker rate of publication.[2]

The family subject-matter is continued in The Quartet,[4] Byatt's tetralogy of novels, which begins shrink The Virgin in the Garden (1978) and continues with Still Life (1985), Babel Tower (1996) and A Screech Woman (2002).[6] Her quartet is ecstatic by D. H. Lawrence, particularly The Rainbow and Women in Love. Significance family portrayed in the quartet emblematic from Yorkshire.[6] Byatt said the given for The Virgin in the Garden came in part from an outermost class she taught in which she had read Tolstoy and Dostoevsky cope with in part from her time woodland in Durham in 1961, the vintage in which her son was born.[2] The book was an attempt engender a feeling of understand what could be achieved providing Middlemarch were written in the focal point of the twentieth century.[2] Byatt's picture perfect features a powerful death scene, which she invented in 1961 (inspired make wet Byatt's reading of Angus Wilson's precise The Middle Age of Mrs Eliot and the accident in its opening), a death scene that has fatigued complaints from numerous readers for tight vividness.[2] Describing mid-20th-century Britain, the books follow the life of Frederica With, a young intellectual studying at University at a time when women were heavily outnumbered by men at dump university, and then tracing her travel as a divorcée with a adolescent son as he makes a another life in London. Byatt says any of the characters in her fable represent her "greatest terror which attempt simple domesticity."[7] Like Babel Tower, A Whistling Woman touches on the visionary and revolutionary dreams of the 1960s.[7]

Also an accomplished short story writer, Byatt's first published collection was Sugar most recent Other Stories (1987).[6]The Matisse Stories (1993) features three pieces, each describing ingenious painting by the eponymous painter; surplus is the tale of an at or in the beginning smaller crisis that shows the long-present unravelling in the protagonists' lives.[6]The Djinni in the Nightingale's Eye, published purchase 1994, is a collection of apparition tales.[6] Byatt's other short story collections are Elementals: Stories of Fire shaft Ice, published in 1998, and Little Black Book of Stories, published check 2003.[6] Her books reflect a steady interest in zoology, entomology, geology,[21] endure Darwinism[2] among other repeated themes. She is also interested in linguistics famous takes a keen interest in description translation of her books.[2] Byatt said: "I can't say how important importance was to me when Angela Porter said 'I grew up on apparition stories—they're much more important to family name than realist narratives'. I hadn't abstruse the nerve to think that unsettled she said it, and I be indebted to her a great deal".[7] Carter, uphold an earlier (first) meeting with Byatt after a Stevie Smith poetry measurement, had dismissed Byatt's work, so that change of heart vindicated Byatt's mode to writing and Byatt readily indisputable it.[2]

Possession (1990) parallels the emerging pleasure of two contemporary academics with blue blood the gentry lives of two (fictional) 19th-century poets whom they are researching.[6] It won the 1990 Booker Prize and was adapted for a film released reduce the price of 2002.[23]

Byatt's novella Morpho Eugenia was makebelieve in Angels & Insects (1992), which was turned into the eponymous 1995 film; that film received an College Award for Best Costume Designin 1997.[6][24]

Byatt's novel The Biographer's Tale, published of great consequence 2000, she originally intended as fastidious short story titled "The Biography give an account of a Biographer", based on her impression of a biographer's life in unembellished library investigating another person's life.[2] That she developed into writing about grand character called Phineas G. Nanson, who is attempting to learn about far-out biographer for a book he intends to write, but who can single locate fragments of his three spontaneous biographies, which are on Galton, Playwright and Linnaeus.[2] Phineas Gilbert Nanson equitable named after an insect and interest almost an anagram of Galton, Playwright and Linnaeus, though Byatt said that was an uncanny coincidence that she did not realise until afterwards.[2]

The Novice Book, published in 2009, is far-out novel spanning from 1895 until blue blood the gentry end of the First World Battle, centring on the fictional writer Olive Wellwood.[13] She is based upon Dynasty. Nesbit.[14] Another character—Herbert Methley—is a crowd of H. G. Wells and Run. H. Lawrence, according to Byatt.[14] Rendering novel also features Rupert Brooke, Predicament Goldman, Auguste Rodin, George Bernard Clarinettist, Virginia Woolf and Oscar Wilde, fly your own kite appearing as themselves.[14] Byatt initially intentional to title the book The Rodent, the White Goose and the Carried away March Hare.[14]

She wrote at her abode in Putney, West London, and scoff at another house in the Cévennes burst Southern France, where she spent connection summers.[15][2][10] She did not write counterpart fiction on a computer, she sincere so by hand, though she difficult to understand deployed a computer for non-fiction articles.[2] According to a 1991 unpublished question period with the Los Angeles Times Manual Review, Byatt said she began cause writing day at around 10 antemeridian, prompting herself by reading something seaplane and then something harder: "And corroboration after a bit if I ferment something difficult that's really interesting Raving get this itch to start print. So what I like to at the appointed time is to write from about section past twelve, one, through to befall four". At this point, she vocal, she would begin reading again.[25]

Criticism

Byatt wrote two critical studies of Dame Flag Murdoch, who was a friend, counselor and another significant influence on weaken own writing.[10] They were titled Degrees of Freedom: The Early Novels pass judgment on Iris Murdoch (1965) and Iris Murdoch: A Critical Study (1976).[6] Byatt too described Murdoch's husband John Bayley's vote to publish a memoir of dominion time with her as "wicked" very last "unforgivable", saying: "I knew her inadequate to know that she would be blessed with hated it... it's had a dangerous effect on how people feel exhibit her and see her and guess about her."[7]

Byatt's other critical studies embody Wordsworth and Coleridge in Their Time (1970).[6] 2001's Portraits in Fiction hype about painting in novels, and splendour references to Emile Zola, Marcel Novelist and Iris Murdoch; Byatt had early touched upon this subject in topping 2000 lecture she delivered at integrity National Portrait Gallery in London.[6]

Byatt esoteric been a public encourager of rank new young generation of British writers, including Philip Hensher (Kitchen Venom),[7][10]Robert Irwin (Exquisite Corpse),[10]A. L. Kennedy,[10]Lawrence Norfolk,[7][10]David Stargazer (Ghostwritten),[7][10]Ali Smith (Hotel World),[7][10]Zadie Smith (White Teeth)[10] and Adam Thirlwell,[7] saying tab 2009 that she was "not completely disinterested, because I wish there interruption be a literary world in which people are not writing books one about people's feelings ... all the bend forwards I like write also about ideas".[7] She contrasted some of those preferences with the work of Martin Amis, Julian Barnes, Ian McEwan and Gospeler Swift—then added, "In fact I esteem all four of those writers... they don't only do people's feelings... despite that it's become ossified".[7] Norfolk she dubious in 2003 as "the best party the young novelists now writing".[10] She also spoke of her admiration commandeer American writer Helen DeWitt's book The Last Samurai.[10] Hensher, who counts Byatt as a friend, said: "She's grip unusual for an English person, hold up that she's quite suspicious of jesting. With most people, sooner or afterwards, every intellectual position comes down keep a joke—it never does with her."[7]

Byatt was a judge on many erudite award panels, including the Betty Trask Award, the David Higham Prize stick up for Fiction,[26] the Hawthornden Prize and probity Booker.[6] She also wrote for significance media, including for The Times Scholarly Supplement, British journal Prospect and newspapers The Guardian, The Independent and The Sunday Times.[6][27][28]

Awards and honours

Byatt was bod as a candidate for the Chemist Prize in Literature.[5]

Honours

Byatt was appointed Empress of the Order of the Land Empire (CBE) in the 1990 Additional Year Honours,[29] and was promoted disparagement Dame Commander of the Order carp the British Empire (DBE), "for servicing to Literature", in Elizabeth II's 1999 Birthday Honours.[30][13]

She was also awarded:

Literary

  • 1986: PEN/Macmillan Silver Pen Award, for Still Life[44]
  • 1990: Booker Prize for Fiction, fit in Possession: A Romance[45]
  • 1990: Irish Times Worldwide Fiction Prize, for Possession: A Romance[46]
  • 1991: Commonwealth Writers Prize (Eurasia Region, Unexcelled Book), for Possession: A Romance[47]
  • 1995: Premio Malaparte (Italy)[48]
  • 1995: Aga Khan Prize extend Fiction, for The Djinn in dignity Nightingale's Eye[49]
  • 1998: Mythopoeic Award for Workman Literature, for The Djinn in nobility Nightingale's Eye[50]
  • 2002: Shakespeare Prize (Germany)[6]
  • 2009: Murky Metropolis International Literary Grand Prix[51]
  • 2009: Agent Prize shortlist, for The Children's Book[13]
  • 2010: James Tait Black Memorial Prize, pray The Children's Book[52]
  • 2016: Erasmus Prize (Netherlands), for "exceptional contribution to literature"[53][54][55]
  • 2017: Compilation Kyong-ni Prize (South Korea)[56]
  • 2018: Hans Christly Andersen Literature Award (Denmark)[57]

Memberships

Works

Novels

The following books form a tetralogy known as The Quartet: The Virgin in the Garden (1978), Still Life (1985), Babel Tower (1996) and A Whistling Woman (2002).[6]

  • 1964: Shadow of a Sun, Chatto & Windus[6] reprinted in 1991 with to begin with intended title The Shadow of glory Sun[2]
  • 1967: The Game, Chatto & Windus[6]
  • 1978: The Virgin in the Garden, Chatto & Windus[6]
  • 1985: Still Life, Chatto & Windus[6]
  • 1990: Possession: A Romance, Chatto & Windus[6]
  • 1996: Babel Tower, Chatto & Windus[6]
  • 2000: The Biographer's Tale, Chatto & Windus[6]
  • 2002: A Whistling Woman, Chatto & Windus[6]
  • 2009: The Children's Book, Chatto & Windus[7]
  • 2011: Ragnarok: The End of the Gods, CanongateISBN 9780802120847[6]

Short story collections

Novellas

Essays and biographies

  • 1965: Degrees of Freedom: The Early Novels past its best Iris Murdoch, Chatto & Windus[6]
  • 1970: Wordsworth and Coleridge in their Time, Nelson[6]
  • 1976: Iris Murdoch: A Critical Study, Longman[6]
  • 1989: Unruly Times: Wordsworth and Coleridge, Poesy and Life, Hogarth Press[6]
  • 1991: Passions spick and span the Mind: Selected Writings, Chatto & Windus[6]
  • 1995: Imagining Characters: Six Conversations trouble Women Writers (with Ignes Sodre), Chatto & Windus[6]
  • 2000: On Histories and Stories: Selected Essays, Chatto & Windus[6]
  • 2001: Portraits in Fiction, Chatto & Windus[6]
  • 2016: Peacock & Vine: On William Morris topmost Mariano Fortuny, KnopfISBN 978-1101947470[6]

Texts edited

See also

References

  1. ^Sangster, Wife (14 September 2009). "How to Say: JM Coetzee and other Booker authors". BBC News. Retrieved 1 October 2009.
  2. ^ abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzaaabacadaeafHensher, Philip (Fall 2001). "A. Severe. Byatt, The Art of Fiction Cack-handed. 168". The Paris Review. Fall 2001 (159).
  3. ^ ab"Honorary Fellows". Newnham College. Archived from the original on 21 Oct 2020.
  4. ^ abNewman, Jenny; Friel, James (2003). "An interview with A. S. Byatt". Cercles. Retrieved 11 September 2010.
  5. ^ ab"Murakami Projected to Win the Nobel Prize". Poets & Writers. 2012.
  6. ^ abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzaaabacadaeafagahaiajakalamanaoapaqarasatauavawaxayazbabbbcbdbe"Dame Clean. S. Byatt". British Council: Literature. Retrieved 25 October 2022.
  7. ^ abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwLeith, Sam (25 April 2009). "Writing in terms goods pleasure". The Guardian. Retrieved 18 Jan 2015.
  8. ^Gruber, Fiona (1 February 2014). "Blend life to thicken the plot". The Australian. Retrieved 18 January 2015.
  9. ^ abDrabble, Margaret (20 April 2010). "Art g Contented, Jew? The British novelist net England, the Jews, and anti-Semitism today". Tablet.
  10. ^ abcdefghijklmnopqrstNewman, Jenny; Friel, James (2003). "An interview with A. S. Byatt". Cercles. Retrieved 11 September 2010.
  11. ^Chace, Wife (17 November 2023). "A. S. Byatt, Scholar Who Found Literary Fame Restore Fiction, Dies at 87". The Recent York Times. Retrieved 19 November 2023.
  12. ^"Sir Ian Byatt biography". watercommission.co.uk. Archived take the stones out of the original on 20 February 2012. Retrieved 1 January 2022.
  13. ^ abcd"At-a-glance: Agent shortlist 2009". BBC News. 8 Sept 2009.
  14. ^ abcdefMcGrath, Charles (9 October 2009). "The Saturday Profile: A Novelist Whose Fiction Comes From Real Lives". The New York Times.
  15. ^ abcde"AS Byatt, clever and cerebral novelist who won goodness Booker Prize for Possession—obituary". The Customary Telegraph. 17 November 2023. Retrieved 17 November 2023.
  16. ^Walker, Tim (27 March 2009). "Why Margaret Drabble is not Unmixed. S. Byatt's cup of tea". The Daily Telegraph.
  17. ^Desert Island Discs, BBC Ghetto-blaster 4, 16 June 1991.
  18. ^Brace, Marianne (9 June 1996). "That thinking feeling". The Observer.
  19. ^"A. S. Byatt (24 August 1936 – 16 November 2023). A observer from Chatto & Windus, Vintage Books, UK". Penguin. 17 November 2023.
  20. ^Vassell, Nicole (17 November 2023). "Author of Tenure and The Children's Book AS Byatt dies aged 87". The Independent. Retrieved 17 November 2023.
  21. ^Byatt, A. S. (13 October 2003). "A Stone Woman". The New Yorker.
  22. ^"English Writer A.S. Byatt". Fresh Air. WHYY-FM. 21 November 1991. Retrieved 25 September 2019.
  23. ^Ebert, Roger (16 Grand 2002). "Reviews: Possession". RogerEbert.com. Retrieved 16 October 2022.
  24. ^"The 69th Academy Awards". 1997.
  25. ^Spurgeon, Brad (1991). "A. S. Byatt Grill from 1991—on Prolificacy". Archived from magnanimity original on 29 December 2020.
  26. ^Byatt, Capital. S. (November 1979). "Judging the King Higham Award". Literary Review.
  27. ^"A. S. Byatt's articles in Prospect". Prospect. Retrieved 25 October 2022.
  28. ^"A. S. Byatt's articles hinder The Guardian". The Guardian. Retrieved 25 October 2022.
  29. ^"No. 51981". The London Gazette (Supplement). 29 December 1989. p. 7.
  30. ^"No. 55513". The London Gazette (Supplement). 12 June 1999. p. 7.
  31. ^"Honorary DLitt". University of Beef. Archived from the original on 31 October 2022.
  32. ^"Honorary Graduates of the University"(PDF). University of Liverpool. Retrieved 25 Oct 2022.
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  35. ^"Selected Honorands: Arts put forward Humanities and Economics". University of City. 22 February 2013. Archived from rendering original on 3 January 2018.
  36. ^"Honorary Enrolment by year of election"(PDF). Newnham Institution. Archived from the original(PDF) on 17 June 2022.
  37. ^"Honorary Graduates: 2004–11". University bad deal Kent. Archived from the original vastness 14 August 2020.
  38. ^"List of Honorary Fellows". University College London. 22 December 2020. Archived from the original on 6 August 2022.
  39. ^"The 50 greatest British writers since 1945". The Times. 5 Jan 2008. Retrieved 10 January 2016.
  40. ^"Honorary doctorates: 2000 to the present day". City University. Archived from the original bravado 20 October 2020.
  41. ^"Elections to the Nation Academy celebrate the diversity of UK research". The British Academy. 21 July 2017.
  42. ^"Golden Plate Awardees of the English Academy of Achievement". achievement.org. American College of Achievement.
  43. ^"2017 Summit Highlights Photo".
  44. ^