Antonia Fraser

Standard Name: Fraser, Antonia
Birth Name: Antonia Pakenham
Styled: Lady Antonia Pakenham
Married Name: Lady Antonia Fraser
Married Name: Lady Antonia Pinter
The writing of AF , who published her first book in 1954 and remains active in the early twenty-first century, falls into several distinct categories. She engaged first in children's writing, then in historical scholarship, much of it biographical and concerned with the lives of women in particular, then in detective fiction. She has also published journalism and edited anthologies. Most highly regarded as a historian, she has also had success with her thrillers and recent memoirs.
Black-and-white portrait photo of Antonia Fraser, 23 January 1969. She has long blonde hair which is half-up, and wears a white blouse with a lacy collar under a dark vest. She has long lower eyelashes.

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
Theme or Topic Treated in Text Margaret Atwood
Subjects include English women writers Virginia Woolf , Antonia Fraser , Marina Warner , and Hilary Mantel , Americans Toni Morrison and Ursula Le Guin, as well as the reluctant Canadian Susanna Moodie and...
Textual Production Emma Tennant
On the recommendation of Lady Antonia Fraser , ET was commissioned by St Martin's Press to write the second sequel to Margaret Mitchell 's American classic, Gone With the Wind.
Lyall, Sarah. “It’s hard to keep a good sequel secret”. New York Times, p. C1, C12.
C1, C12
Lyall, Sarah. “Book sequel creates a new civil war”. New York Times, p. D7.
D7
Textual Production Harold Pinter
HP and his wife Antonia Fraser received advance, numbered copies of Pinter's Poems, edited by her and published by the Greville Press .
Fraser, Antonia. Must You Go?. Random House of Canada.
263
Textual Production Harold Pinter
The Guardian carried a poem by the still living HP entitled To my Wife: You took my hand / You watched me die / And found my life / You were my life /...
Textual Production Harold Pinter
Eighteen months before he died, HP composed a poem of farewell to Antonia Fraser that begins: I shall miss you so much when I'm dead.
Fraser, Antonia. Must You Go?. Random House of Canada.
313
Textual Features Harold Pinter
The characters, Hirst, an established, even establishment writer, and Spooner, a minor poet, are named after famous cricketers, according to Pinter's frequent practice in other works as well.
Fraser, Antonia. Must You Go?. Random House of Canada.
22
Antonia Fraser explained this play (to...
Textual Features Harold Pinter
Antonia Fraser called The Rooma savage, melancholy play which ends in appalling on stage physical violence. None of Pinter's other mature plays do this: he learned to keep the violence either offstage or in...
Residence Vita Sackville-West
In March 1975 Antonia Fraser visited Sissinghurst and wrote in her diary: Slept in Vita's bedroom, cold but grand. No ghosts.
Fraser, Antonia. Must You Go?. Random House of Canada.
54
Reception Agnes Strickland
Lives of the Queens of England was frequently reprinted with additions and revisions; the 1852 edition, regarded as definitive, was reprinted in 1972 with an introduction by the Stricklands' fellow-biographer Antonia Fraser . Fraser 's...
Reception Caryl Churchill
Antonia Fraser (who did not see the play but heard the author describe it) thought this Vivid, horrifying—and not all that unfair.
Fraser, Antonia. Must You Go?. Random House of Canada.
273
Publishing Emma Tennant
ET , who had been taken on in an attempt to avoid negative reviews like those that had plagued Alexandra Ripley 's sequel, Scarlett, 1991, finished the book four months ahead of schedule, but...
Publishing Anthony Trollope
Doctor Thorne, the third novel in the series, was published by Smith Elder in 1858.
Sutherland, John. The Stanford Companion to Victorian Fiction. Stanford University Press.
191
Ruth Rendell wrote an introduction to a Penguin edition in 1991. The fourth in the series, Framley Parsonage...
politics Harold Pinter
HP and Antonia Fraser hosted a dinner meeting which launched an informal Labour philosophy group calling itself therefore the June 20 Group .
Fraser, Antonia. Must You Go?. Random House of Canada.
153-5
Performance of text Harold Pinter
HP and Antonia Fraser performed the two parts in his sketch Apart From That, at the Inner Temple in London, to benefit a family charity, the Patrick Pakenham Scholarships for young ex-offenders.
“Harold Pinter (1930 - 2008)”. doollee.com: Playwrights.
Occupation Rebecca West
The prize went to P. H. Newby 's Something to Answer For, which according to Kermode years later was a compromise decision. Dame Rebecca didn't dislike it as much as nearly all the others...

Timeline

1 January 1916: The British edition of Vogue (an American...

Building item

1 January 1916

The British edition of Vogue (an American fashion magazine) began publishing from Condé Nast in Hanover Square, London.

23 April 1975: A major demonstration was held in Belgrave...

Writing climate item

23 April 1975

A major demonstration was held in Belgrave Square, London, in support of Public Lending Right.
Fraser, Antonia. Must You Go?. Random House of Canada.
16

1984: The Authors' Foundation was set up to make...

Writing climate item

1984

The Authors' Foundation was set up to make awards to writers: it marked the centenary of the Society of Authors and had help from the Royal Literary Fund ; it had Antonia Fraser and Michael Holroyd

Texts

Fraser, Antonia. “A Most Superior Street”. Spectator.co.uk. Champagne for the brain.
Fraser, Antonia. A Splash of Red. Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1981.
Fraser, Antonia. Boadicea’s Chariot: The Warrior Queens. Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1988.
Fraser, Antonia. Cool Repentance. Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1982.
Fraser, Antonia. Cromwell: Our Chief of Men. Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1973.
Fraser, Antonia, editor. “Introduction”. The Lives of the Kings and Queens of England, Wiedenfeld and Nicholson, 1975, pp. 9-18.
Fraser, Antonia. Jemima Shore at the Sunny Grave and Other Stories. Bloomsbury, 1991.
Fraser, Antonia. Jemima Shore’s First Case and Other Stories. Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1986.
Fraser, Antonia. King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. Heirloom Library, 1954.
Fraser, Antonia. King James VI of Scotland, I of England. Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1974.
Fraser, Antonia. Marie Antoinette: The Journey. Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 2001.
Fraser, Antonia. Mary, Queen of Scots. Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1969.
Fraser, Antonia. Mary, Queen of Scots. Franklin Library, 1981.
Fraser, Antonia. Must You Go?. Random House of Canada, 2010.
Fraser, Antonia. Must You Go?. Weidenfeld, 2010.
Fraser, Antonia. My History. Orion, 2015.
Fraser, Antonia. “Optical Research”. Lives for Sale: Biographers’ Tales, edited by Mark Bostridge, Continuum, 2004, pp. 113-17.
Fraser, Antonia. Our Israeli Diary. Oneworld Publications, 2017.
Fraser, Antonia. Oxford Blood. Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1985.
Fraser, Antonia. Political Death. Heinemann, 1994.
Fraser, Antonia. Quiet as a Nun. Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1977.
Fraser, Antonia. The Cavalier Case. Bloomsbury, 1990.
Fraser, Antonia. The Gunpowder Plot: Terror & Faith in 1605. Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1996.
Fraser, Antonia. The King and the Catholics. Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 2018.
Fraser, Antonia. The Six Wives of Henry VIII. Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1992.