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.
qtd. in
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.

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
Literary responses Willa Cather
H. L. Mencken called this a book of very fine achievement and of even finer promise.
qtd. in
Cather, Willa. My Ántonia. Editor Urgo, Joseph R., Broadview Press, 2003.
297
In 1979 A. S. Byatt wrote that her own personal material gave WCa way of developing a...
Literary responses Willa Cather
This novel poses a challenge both to contemporary and to later conventions of gender morality—a fact reflected in the tendency of commentators to liken it to Flaubert 's Madame Bovary,
Cather, Willa. A Lost Lady. Virago, 2000.
cover
than which it...
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.
qtd. in
Lindblad, Ishrat. Pamela Hansford Johnson. Twayne, 1982.
125
It reminded him of George Eliot : he praised...
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, 1990.
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, 2003, 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 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, 2007.
317
A. S. Byatt admired the mocking and sinister games played by the...
Literary responses Muriel Spark
This novel was nominated for the Booker McConnell Prize in the year of its publication.
Contemporary Authors: New Revision Series. Gale Research, 1981–2025, Numerous volumes.
76
Reviews were a chorus of praise, with different commentators taking different views. A. S. Byatt saw the subject as...
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,
qtd. in
Byatt, A. S. “An exciting event this year has been the publication. ”. The Times Literary Supplement, No. 5670, 2 Dec. 2011, 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 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 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, 29 June 2009.
Literary responses Alice Munro
The Selected Stories was hailed as an important literary event, and produced particularly interesting reviews from A. S. Byatt and John Updike . Byatt wrote that Munro was the equal of Chekhov or de Maupassant
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.
qtd. in
The Poetry Archive. 2005, http://www.poetryarchive.org/poetryarchive/home.do.
RF feels that in Jocasta's Death she has achieved...
Literary responses Evelyn Sharp
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, 3 May 2008, pp. Review 4 - 6.
4
A year later she...
Literary responses Alice Munro
After it won the O. Henry Prize (in the first year in which Canadians were eligible for this award) Munro described the genesis of the title story in an actual occurrence where a woman and...
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...

Timeline

No timeline events available.

Texts

Byatt, A. S. The Matisse Stories. Chatto and Windus, 1993.
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.