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.
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.
Publishing
Monica Dickens
She used to get up at about 4 a.m. and write until the baby woke. The title stemmed in part from the windiness of Cape Cod (where she was living), in part from her heroine's...
Johnson, Pamela Hansford. Important to Me. Macmillan; Scribner.
111
A reprint of 1987 has...
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...
Occupation
Penelope Fitzgerald
After the war PF
worked chiefly as a journalist and teacher. The story goes that she adopted elaborate procedures to conceal her identity when submitting work to Punch, which was under her father's editorship...
Occupation
Elizabeth Jane Howard
EJH
's assignments in 1974 included, as well as the Rose Kennedy
interview, acting as one of the three judges of the Booker Prize. (Another judge this year was A. S. Byatt
.) Howard received...
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
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.
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
Monica Dickens
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
Literary responses
Ali Smith
A. S. Byatt
praised Smith's novel as sharp, witty, innovatory and moving,
Byatt, A. S. “An exciting event this year has been the publication. ”. The Times Literary Supplement, No. 5670, p. 9.
9
while Lionel Shriver
, reviewing for the Financial Times, was especially taken with the photo researcher's story, particularly the hilariously awkward...
Literary responses
Ruth Fainlight
A. S. Byatt
is quoted by the publishers of this book saying that RF
's poems give us truly new visions of usual and mysterious events.
The Poetry Archive. http://www.poetryarchive.org/poetryarchive/home.do.
RF
feels that in Jocasta's Death she has achieved...
Literary responses
Hilary Mantel
HM
already features in critical surveys of the modern British novel, such as that by Nick Rennison
, 2004. A. S. Byatt
discusses her (among writers of both sexes including predecessors Elizabeth Bowen
and Muriel Spark
Literary responses
Muriel Spark
Graham Greene
offered the same accolade as for her previous novel, recognizing its disappointing reception with: What fools the reviewers have been.
Greene, Graham. Graham Greene. A Life in Letters. Editor Greene, Richard, Alfred A. Knopf.
317
A. S. Byatt
admired the mocking and sinister games played by the...
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.