Anita Brookner

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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.
Close-up portrait of Anita Brooker, seated with her hands under her chin, in front of bookshelves at her home in Chelsea, London, 18 September 1989.

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
Theme or Topic Treated in Text Michèle Roberts
This volume brings together pieces from various occasions and venues. In them MR discusses many of her favourite topics—the food, sex and god named in her title, the second and third often involving the relation...
Textual Production Mary Wesley
It appeared exactly a year after she had finished the first draft (working title Period Piece) and put away the manuscript (written in ink on paper of A4 size, with lines but without margins)...
Reception Angela Carter
Nights at the Circus, which was long-listed for the Booker Prize, remains AC 's best known work.
Gamble, Sarah. Angela Carter. A Literary Life. Palgrave Macmillan.
1
Lee, Alison. Angela Carter. Twayne.
93
The fact that it did not make the short-list (the Booker that year went to...
Publishing Margaret Kennedy
Initial sales of the novel were slow but by the new year it was being widely read and the author had attained celebrity status. Almost instantly, she began working on a stage adaptation, which was...
Publishing Margaret Kennedy
This novel has seen many subsequent editions, including a 1985 reprint in Virago 's Modern Classics series, for which Anita Brookner again wrote the introduction.
OCLC WorldCat. http://www.oclc.org/firstsearch/content/worldcat/. Accessed 1999.
Publishing Edith Templeton
This novel appeared in the USA as Proper Bohemians. The 1985 Hogarth Press edition retains the original title and has an introduction by Anita Brookner .
Publishing Edith Templeton
This too has a Hogarth Press edition, 1986, with an introduction by Anita Brookner .
Publishing Edith Templeton
This novel too was reprinted by the Hogarth Press , 1985, with Anita Brookner 's introduction.
Publishing Edith Templeton
The back cover reproduces a painting of ET by Daphne Day , and there are photos of buildings, paintings, landscape, and masquerade costumes. The first impression sold out and a new impression was run off...
Occupation Honoré de Balzac
Mary Russell Mitford translated some of Balzac's works. His oeuvre influenced many writers, including Mary Elizabeth Braddon , Storm Jameson , and Natalie Clifford Barney , and has attracted criticism from Anita Brookner .
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. http://www.contemporarywriters.com.
JG 's father's response to her Booker short-listing...
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 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 Germaine Greer
Greer professed herself deeply anxious about the reviews.
Wallace, Christine. Germaine Greer: Untamed Shrew. Richard Cohen Books.
193
The Penguin paperback edition, however, quoted on its cover Anita Brookner in the Observer calling this a brave book,Anthony Storr in the Independent describing it...
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.
465-6
Gabriel Josipovici , reviewing this novel in the Times Literary Supplement, called MSthe best English novelist...

Timeline

January 1996: Novelist Kate Mosse and a committee of literary...

Women writers item

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...

Texts

Brookner, Anita. A Closed Eye. Random House, 1991.
Brookner, Anita. A Closed Eye. Jonathan Cape, 1991.
Brookner, Anita. A Family Romance. Jonathan Cape, 1993.
Brookner, Anita. A Friend from England. Jonathan Cape, 1987.
Brookner, Anita. A Misalliance. Jonathan Cape, 1986.
Brookner, Anita. A Private View. Jonathan Cape, 1994.
Brookner, Anita. A Start in Life. Jonathan Cape, 1981.
Brookner, Anita. Altered States. Jonathan Cape, 1996.
Brookner, Anita. Brief Lives. Jonathan Cape, 1990.
Brookner, Anita. Falling Slowly. Random House, 1988.
Brookner, Anita. Falling Slowly. Viking, 1998.
Brookner, Anita. Family and Friends. Jonathan Cape, 1985.
Brookner, Anita. Fraud. Jonathan Cape, 1992.
Brookner, Anita. Hotel du Lac. Jonathan Cape, 1984.
Brookner, Anita. Incidents in the Rue Laugier. Jonathan Cape, 1995.
Brookner, Anita. Incidents in the Rue Laugier. Random House, 1996.
Brookner, Anita, and Margaret Kennedy. “Introduction”. The Constant Nymph, Virago, 1983, p. ix - xiv.
Brookner, Anita, and Margaret Kennedy. “Introduction”. Troy Chimneys, Virago, 1985, p. vii - x.
Brookner, Anita, and Edith Templeton. “Introduction”. Summer in the Country, Hogarth Press, 1985.
Brookner, Anita, and Edith Templeton. “Introduction”. The Island of Desire, Hogarth Press, 1985.
Brookner, Anita, and Edith Templeton. “Introduction”. Living on Yesterday, Hogarth Press, 1986.
Brookner, Anita. J. A. Dominique Ingres. Purnell, 1965.
Brookner, Anita. Latecomers. Jonathan Cape, 1988.
Brookner, Anita. Latecomers. Grafton, 1989.
Brookner, Anita. Lewis Percy. Jonathan Cape, 1989.