Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
A. S. Byatt
Standard Name: Byatt, A. S.
Birth Name: Antonia Susan Drabble
Married Name: Antonia Susan Byatt
Married Name: Antonia Susan Duffy
ASB
, publishing in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, is predominantly a novelist of ideas. Her works (stories and criticism as well as novels) are intellectually demanding, typically spinning a complex web of literary and cultural allusions. She likes depicting extreme personal situations: critic Hilary Spurling has said she is adept at rendering disintegration.
Byatt, A. S. The Matisse Stories. Chatto and Windus.
This volume prompted A. S. Byatt
to call its author Jane Austen
's nearest heir.
“Flamingo Press advertisement for ’The Means of Escape’ by Penelope Fitzgerald”. London Review of Books, p. 21.
21
Literary responses
Iris Murdoch
The first monograph on IM
was that of 1965 by A. S. Byatt
, who faulted her for the inconsistency of her fiction with her expressed philosophic views. This study provoked further academic discussion, and...
Literary responses
Barbara Pym
Initial comment included reviews or articles by A. S. Byatt
and Marghanita Laski
.
Allen, Orphia Jane. Barbara Pym: Writing a Life. Scarecrow Press.
Allen, Orphia Jane. Barbara Pym: Writing a Life. Scarecrow Press.
40
but effectively ironic, witty view of academia. Anne Wyatt-Brown
Literary responses
Willa Cather
WC
's own later comments on this book were somewhat grudging. It was conventional, she said, carefully arranged but unnecessary and superficial.
Cather, Willa. On Writing. Editor Tennant, Stephen, Alfred A. Knopf.
92
When she wrote it she thought it a great thing that the...
Literary responses
Barbara Pym
Pym is not one of those women writers whose stock has risen through feminist re-evaluation. Five years after the influential Times Literary Supplement article was published, Penelope Lively
wrote, I am always surprised that the...
Literary responses
Willa Cather
H. L. Mencken
called this a book of very fine achievement and of even finer promise.
Cather, Willa. My Ántonia. Editor Urgo, Joseph R., Broadview Press.
297
In 1979 A. S. Byatt
wrote that her own personal material gave WCa way of developing a...
Literary responses
Georgette Heyer
Joanna Cannan
(a friend of GH
) based a character on her in No Walls of Jasper (1930) who is described in Heyeresque style. She is not beautiful, not pretty; her nose was too large...
Literary responses
Kamila Shamsie
A Library Journal review called the novel a beautifully-written tale that is equal parts A. S. Byatt
-style mystery and mother-daughter saga and the compelling angle that post-9/11 Pakistani politics add to themes of responsibility...
Literary responses
Willa Cather
This novel poses a challenge both to contemporary and to later conventions of gender morality—a fact reflected in the tendency of commentators to liken it to Flaubert
's Madame Bovary,
Cather, Willa. A Lost Lady. Virago.
cover
than which it...
Literary responses
Evelyn Sharp
In the early twenty-first century A. S. Byatt
discovered ES
when, working on her novel The Children's Book, she asked scholar Jack Zipes
for links between fairy stories and turn-of-the-century socialism and he mentioned Sharp.
Byatt, A. S. “Freedom won’t wait”. guardian.co.uk.
Literary responses
Evelyn Sharp
A. S. Byatt
in early 2008 found herself interested and excited by this book (then about to be reprinted). She described Sharp as perspicacious, witty and a very good writer.
“Back—due to popular demand”. The Guardian, pp. Review 4 - 6.
4
A year later she...
Literary responses
Willa Cather
This novel won the Prix Femina Américain.
Blain, Virginia et al., editors. The Feminist Companion to Literature in English: Women Writers from the Middle Ages to the Present. Yale University Press; Batsford.
Urgo, Joseph R., and Willa Cather. “Introduction. Willa Cather: A Brief Chronology. A Note on the Text”. My Ántonia, edited by Joseph R. Urgo and Joseph R. Urgo, Broadview Press, pp. 9-39.
37
It was praised in the Saturday Review of Literature by Wilbur Cross
, Governor of Connecticut, and the same journal published a letter of acknowledgement from the...
Literary responses
Pamela Hansford Johnson
This novel marked a step forward in the public valuation of PHJ
. Walter Allen
called it one of the best novels of our time.
It was this year that A. S. Byatt
registered in print her deep admiration of MD
(who, for her part, thought Byatt underestimated the humour in her books).
“The Times Digital Archive 1785-2007”. Thompson Gale: The Times Digital Archive.
(2 November 1970): 12
Occupation
Hilary Mantel
After leaving the University of Sheffield
, HM
spent some time as a social worker at a geriatric hospital, followed by a period of retail industry employment.
“Dictionary of Literary Biography online”. Gale Databases: Literature Resource Center-LRC.
271
She worked at two menial jobs in...
Timeline
No timeline events available.
Texts
Byatt, A. S., editor. The Oxford Book of English Short Stories. Oxford University Press, 1998.
Byatt, A. S. The Virgin in the Garden. Chatto and Windus, 1978.
