Angela Thirkell, having already published journalism (some of it literary) and a family memoir, launched her career as a novelist in the 1930s (her own early forties) and continued publishing for nearly thirty years at the rate of a title a year or more. Among her novels the best-known are those of the long Barsetshire series: stories of English village life where characters are effortlessly eccentric, and issues of class, nationality, gender, and sexual preference are presented with a characteristic blend of naiveté, obliquity, and straight-faced humour. She also published a children's book, a historical biography, and introductions to reprints of other authors' novels.
Milestones
30 January 1890 Angela Margaret Mackail (later AT) was born at
27 Young Street,
Kensington, London, the eldest child in the Mackail family.
June 1921 AT, in
Australia and pressed for both money and occupation, began writing seriously for publication by placing "An Interview with
J. M. Barrie" in
The Forum (on the women's page).
29 January 1961 AT died at Birtley House, at
Bramley in
Surrey, of aplastic anaemia.
November 1961 AT's final novel,
Three Score and Ten, set in Barchester, was finished by
C. A. Lejeune after Thirkell's death.
