Penelope Lively

PL , who published her first book in 1970, began writing for children before moving on to adult novels, stories, a non-fictional account of landscape as record of history, and to memoirs in which, again, her broad, socially- and politically-inflected contexts for personal reminiscence bring her close to writing the history of cultural change. Through her work in various genres her concerns remain constant: she is deeply interested in both place and time. She sets most of her fiction in intensely-realised rural settings (with one memorable account of London). Her child protagonists often feel the unaccountable survival of the past in the present; her adult ones tend to be re-evaluating their own past, often in the light of death or change.
Colour photo, half-length, of Penelope Lively talking at a microphone, with a water carafe and tumblers in front. She is wearing tortoiseshell glasses, a blue jacket over black, a scarf, and a silver chain. Her grey hair is jaw-length.

Milestones

17 March 1933

Penelope Low (later PL ) was born in Cairo. Egypt had been an independent country since 28 February 1922, but continued to be occupied by the British army until 26 August 1936.
Moran, Mary Hurley. Penelope Lively. Twayne.
xiii
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.

February 1970

PL issued her first book, a novel for children entitled Astercote, with illustrations by Antony Maitland .
Whitaker’s Books in Print. J. Whitaker and Sons.
(1988)
British Library Catalogue. http://explore.bl.uk/primo_library/libweb/action/search.do?dscnt=0&tab=local_tab&dstmp=1489778087340&vid=BLVU1&mode=Basic&fromLo.

May 1987

PL published what perhaps still remains her best-known novel, Moon Tiger, set largely in Cairo in the 1940s, winner of that year's Booker Prize.
Whitaker’s Books in Print. J. Whitaker and Sons.
(1988)
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.

Biography

Birth and Family

17 March 1933

Penelope Low (later PL ) was born in Cairo. Egypt had been an independent country since 28 February 1922, but continued to be occupied by the British army until 26 August 1936.
Moran, Mary Hurley. Penelope Lively. Twayne.
xiii
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.

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