A. S. Byatt

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, 1993.
prelims
Colour photograph of A.S. Byatt, shown from the shoulders up. She is wearing a black fleece sweater with a high neck, zipped almost to the top, with a grey cardigan over top. Her hair is short and grey and she stands against the background of a street.

Milestones

24 August 1936
Antonia Drabble (later ASB ) was born in Sheffield, Yorkshire.
Contemporary Authors: New Revision Series. Gale Research, 1981.
50
By March 1990
ASB published Possession. A Romance, an ambitious novel about scholarly reconstruction of the nineteenth century, incorporating long passages of poetry in two pastiche Victorian styles, female and male.
Kelly, Kathleen Coyne. A.S. Byatt. Twayne, 1996.
124, 141

Biography

Birth and Family

24 August 1936
Antonia Drabble (later ASB ) was born in Sheffield, Yorkshire.
Contemporary Authors: New Revision Series. Gale Research, 1981.
50

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