Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
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.
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
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. Editor Greene, Richard, Alfred A. Knopf.
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, p. vii - x.
vii, ix, x
It won, nevertheless, the 1953 James Tait Black...
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.
Literary responses
Penelope Lively
This work was shortlisted for the Sunday Express book of the year award.
Lively, Penelope. A House Unlocked. Penguin.
prelims
Anita Brookner
(a devoted reader of PL
, who values her ability to make the ordinary seem full of interest, and...
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.
This novel won the Hawthornden Prize the year after publication.It received generally enthusiastic reviews, although Anita Brookner
evinced a degree of wariness in her comment: The novel, though expert, is unsettling. It is unsettling through...
Literary responses
Edith Templeton
Anita Brookner
notes that many reviewers felt this book to be in bad taste, a world away from such entertaining hits of this year as Margery Allingham
's Tiger in the Smoke, Nancy Spain
Literary responses
Deborah Moggach
This was the only one of DM
's books that her father
disliked—a reaction caused by his fear of its being biographically interpreted.
Miller, Lucasta. “The home front”. The Guardian, p. 11.
11
The Times Literary Supplement reviewer, Galen Swanson
, expressed admiration for...
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.
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
.
Timeline
No timeline events available.
Texts
Brookner, Anita. Look at Me. Jonathan Cape, 1983.
Brookner, Anita. Providence. Jonathan Cape, 1982.
Brookner, Anita. Romanticism and Its Discontents. Viking, 2000.
Brookner, Anita. Soundings. Harvill Press, 1997.
Brookner, Anita. Strangers. Penguin, 2009.
Templeton, Edith, and Anita Brookner. Summer in the Country. Hogarth Press, 1985.
Brookner, Anita. The Bay of Angels. Viking, 2001.
Kennedy, Margaret, and Anita Brookner. The Constant Nymph. Virago, 1983.
Brookner, Anita. The Genius of the Future. Phaidon, 1971.
Templeton, Edith, and Anita Brookner. The Island of Desire. Hogarth Press, 1985, http://U of A HSS.
Brookner, Anita. “The Loneliness of Miss Pym”. Sunday Times, p. 45.
Brookner, Anita. The Next Big Thing. Viking, 2002.
Brookner, Anita. “The return of the earth mother”. Times Literary Supplement, No. 4013, p. 202.
Brookner, Anita. Undue Influence. Viking, 1999.
Brookner, Anita. Visitors. Jonathan Cape, 1997.
Brookner, Anita. “We have stood apart studiously”. The Spectator, Vol.
