Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
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.
Byatt, A. S. The Matisse Stories. Chatto and Windus.
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,
Byatt, A. S. “An exciting event this year has been the publication. ”. The Times Literary Supplement, No. 5670, 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
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.
317
A. S. Byatt
admired the mocking and sinister games played by the...
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.
The Poetry Archive. http://www.poetryarchive.org/poetryarchive/home.do.
RF
feels that in Jocasta's Death she has achieved...
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
Muriel Spark
This novel was nominated for the Booker McConnell Prize in the year of its publication.
Contemporary Authors: New Revision Series. Gale Research.
76
Reviews were a chorus of praise, with different commentators taking different views. A. S. Byatt
saw the subject as...
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
Margaret Atwood
Novelist and critic Aritha Van Herk
found this volume less playful than its predecessors,a dry and dire collection . . . . Atwood as Cassandra, wailing her prophecy in the ear of a deaf...
Literary responses
Elaine Feinstein
A. S. Byatt
called Mother's Girla major achievement.
Feinstein, Elaine. It Goes with the Territory. Alma.
245
Reviewers tended to express faint disappointment with All You Need, perhaps because they were expecting something different.
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...
Literary responses
Pat Barker
With this novel PB
won the Guardian Fiction Prize. A. S. Byatt
wrote that the book provided a new vision of what the First World War did to human beings, male and female, soldiers and...
Literary responses
Alice Munro
Among a rich harvest of prizes and honours, AM
won the Giller Prize in both 1998 and 2004. In 2002 an Alice Munro Literary Garden, just beside the museum, was dedicated in Wingham, Ontario...
Literary responses
Penelope Fitzgerald
This volume prompted A. S. Byatt
to call its author Jane Austen
's nearest heir.
“Flamingo Press advertisement for ’The Means of Escape’ by Penelope Fitzgerald”. London Review of Books, p. 21.
21
Literary responses
Iris Murdoch
The first monograph on IM
was that of 1965 by A. S. Byatt
, who faulted her for the inconsistency of her fiction with her expressed philosophic views. This study provoked further academic discussion, and...
Occupation
Elizabeth Jane Howard
EJH
's assignments in 1974 included, as well as the Rose Kennedy
interview, acting as one of the three judges of the Booker Prize. (Another judge this year was A. S. Byatt
.) Howard received...
Timeline
No timeline events available.
Texts
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.