Bernice Rubens

-
BR was an immensely, steadily prolific later twentieth-century novelist (with a couple of dozen titles, the last published in 2003). She also wrote for the stage, film, and television. A vivid memoir appeared posthumously. She is adept at satiric comedy, which both in early and later work she often achieves by moving out of naturalism into physical impossibility and absurdism. Early works in her fantasy style often employ extreme versions of stereotypically presented Jewish family life; in later works they are more likely to involve psychiatric topics. Several of her novels look at life in institutions (schools, orphanages, old people's homes); a few deal with the sweep of international, multi-generational history.

Milestones

26 July 1923

BR was born in Cardiff (probably, she says, at 9 Glossop Terrace), the third of four children in the family (before the addition of an extra almost-brother, Hugo Gross , a Jewish refugee from Germany).
Earlier sources list her birth as five years later than this.
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.
Todd, Janet, editor. Dictionary of British Women Writers. Routledge.
Rubens, Bernice. When I Grow Up. Time Warner Books.
1, 7

1962

BR published her second and for a long time her best-known novel, Madame Sousatzka.
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.

By mid-October 2003

BR 's final novel, The Sergeants' Tale, appeared about a year before her death.
Hickling, Alfred. “Mission impossible”. Guardian Unlimited.

13 October 2004

BR died in the Royal Free Hospital , Hampstead, two weeks after suffering a stroke on top of her chronic bronchitis.
Kennedy, Maev. “Booker winner Bernice Rubens dies”. Guardian Unlimited.
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.

3 November 2005

BR 's When I Grow Up. A Memoir appeared in print about a year after her death; when she died she had almost finished writing it.
The verso of the title-page says it was published in November; the Bodleian Library 's acquisition stamp says 27 October.
Blackwell’s Online Bookshop. http://Bookshop.Blackwell.co.uk.
Kennedy, Maev. “Booker winner Bernice Rubens dies”. Guardian Unlimited.
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.

Biography

Birth and Family

26 July 1923

BR was born in Cardiff (probably, she says, at 9 Glossop Terrace), the third of four children in the family (before the addition of an extra almost-brother, Hugo Gross , a Jewish refugee from Germany).
Earlier sources list her birth as five years later than this.
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.
Todd, Janet, editor. Dictionary of British Women Writers. Routledge.
Rubens, Bernice. When I Grow Up. Time Warner Books.
1, 7