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Anita Brookner
-
Standard Name: Brookner, Anita
Birth Name: Anita Brookner
AB
began publishing as an academic translator, art historian, and book reviewer in the 1960s and 70s, but became far better known for her novels. She was fifty when her first work of fiction appeared; after that they followed in astonishingly rapid succession to the number of twenty-four, passing equally rapidly into paperback. She was both popular and on the whole critically respected, yet she attracted from some reviewers a strain of virulently hostile comment.
Connections
| Connections Sort descending | Author name | Excerpt |
|---|---|---|
| Friends, Associates | Edith Templeton | In 1984 the novelist Anita Brookner
met ET
at Bordighera. After their meeting, according to Templeton, they corresponded until the friendship was broken by Templeton's shock at discovering that Brookner had trained with Anthony Blunt |
| Friends, Associates | Rosamond Lehmann | In her final decade RL
's old friends found her difficult and demanding; but the rediscovery of her novels brought her the pleasure of young friends: publisher Carmen Callil
, novelist Anita Brookner
, and... |
| Intertextuality and Influence | Edna O'Brien | EOB
has named many women writers as important to her: she includes among these Jane Austen
, Emily Dickinson
, Elizabeth Bowen
, Anna Akhmatova
, Anita Brookner
, and Margaret Atwood
, adding: Every... |
| Literary responses | Michèle Roberts | On reaching paperback this book was panned both in the Independent by Murrough O'Brien
and in the Guardian by A. H.. O'Brien wrote, The story is marvellous, but the prose often nods. .... |
| Literary responses | Jane Gardam | JG
continued to attract prizes in her new genre. This work was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and in 1989 won the Baudelaire Prize in France. British Council Film and Literature Department, in association with Book Trust. Contemporary Writers in the UK. |
| Literary responses | Maggie Gee | The cover of the paperback edition quotes Anita Brookner
in The Spectator saying I read it twice, and it was even better the second time, and Jeanette Winterson
in the Sunday Times saying it was... |
| Literary responses | Muriel Spark | Reviews in the USA were mostly bad, though Anita Brookner
published there a detailed, admiring analysis. Stannard, Martin. Muriel Spark. The Biography. Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 2009. 465-6 |
| Literary responses | Germaine Greer | Greer professed herself deeply anxious about the reviews. Wallace, Christine. Germaine Greer: Untamed Shrew. Richard Cohen Books, 1999. 193 |
| Literary responses | Muriel Spark | Her friend Graham Greene
hastened to offer his usual compliment of best-since-Memento Mori—this time after reading only the first three pages. Greene, Graham. Graham Greene. A Life in Letters. Greene, RichardEditor , Alfred A. Knopf, 2007. 399 |
| Literary responses | Margaret Kennedy | Brookner
calls Troy Chimneys a disconcerting novel because of its occasionally puzzling arrangment and the oblique. . . manner in which it is told. Brookner, Anita, and Margaret Kennedy. “Introduction”. Troy Chimneys, Virago, 1985, p. vii - x. vii, ix, x |
| Literary responses | Edith Templeton | While some reviewers criticised this novel as superficial, the New York Times found in it a brisk but sympathetic discourse upon human folly and the blind fanaticism of people determined to preserve an outmoded way... |
| Literary responses | Doris Lessing | This novel was, however, highly and perceptively praised by Anita Brookner
in a retrospective review reprinted in her Soundings, 1997. The Royal Swedish Academy
in 2007 called it one of the handful of books... |
| Literary responses | Edith Templeton | Brookner
says that in this novel ET
was trying to entertain the English without frightening them. Brookner, Anita, and Edith Templeton. “Introduction”. Living on Yesterday, Hogarth Press, 1986. |
| Literary responses | Penelope Lively | This work was shortlisted for the Sunday Express book of the year award. Lively, Penelope. A House Unlocked. Penguin, 2002. prelims |
| Literary responses | Shena Mackay | SM
's fellow-novelists greeted this work with a chorus of praise. Anita Brookner
called it something quite rare . . . a rite of passage which will leave few readers unaffected. Mackay, Shena. The Orchard on Fire. Vintage, 1999. prelims |
Timeline
January 1996
Novelist Kate Mosse
and a committee of literary professionals established the Orange Prize for Fiction (later the Baileys Prize, now the Women's Proze for Fiction), a literary prize to be solely awarded to and judged...