Susan Hill
Standard Name: Hill, Susan
Birth Name: Susan Elizabeth Hill
Married Name: Susan Elizabeth Wells
began publishing very young, and has been extraordinarily prolific throughout the second half of the twentieth century and into the twenty-first. She started off as a novelist and short-story writer, and then branched out into other genres, particularly children's writing, but also radio plays, scholarly and editorial work, cooking and gardening books, and travel writing. In fiction, she has made her own a territory of mutely suffering protagonists too eccentric, powerless, or impaired (emotionally, intellectually or physically) to engineer their escape from emotional pain and despair. (Attempts at escape generally fail.) Many of her characters (including children and old people) are isolated; relationships are often based on tormenting or exaggerated dependence. Her social settings are often unparticularised by date, but are apparently a kind of old-fashioned present; other fictions inhabit the past. She works with both the bleakly realistic and quotidian, and with atmospheres of gothic uncanniness, but her typical narrating voice remains steadfastly detached.
Timeline
Texts
Hill, Susan, and Flora Macdonald Mayor. The Third Miss Symons, Virago, 1980, p. n.p.
Hill, Susan. A Bit of Singing and Dancing. Hamish Hamilton, 1973.
Hill, Susan. A Change for the Better. Hamish Hamilton, 1969.
Hill, Susan. Air and Angels. Sinclair-Stevenson, 1991.
Hill, Susan. Black Sheep. Vintage, 2013.
Hill, Susan, editor. Books and Company. Long Barn Books.
Hill, Susan, and Angela Barrett. Can it Be True?. Hamish Hamilton, 1988.
Hill, Susan. Do Me a Favour. Hutchinson, 1963.
Hill, Susan. Dolly. Profile Books, 2012.
Hill, Susan. Family. Michael Joseph, 1989.
Hill, Susan. Family. Penguin, 1990.
Hill, Susan. From the Heart. Chatto, 2017.
Hill, Susan. Gentleman and Ladies. Hamish Hamilton, 1986.
Hill, Susan. Howards End is on the Landing. Profile Books, 2010.
Hill, Susan. I’m the King of the Castle. Hamish Hamilton, 1970.
Hill, Susan. In the Springtime of the Year. Hamish Hamilton, 1974.
Hill, Susan. Jacob’s Room is Full of Books. Profile Books, 2017.
Hill, Susan. Listening to the Orchestra. Long Barn Books, 1996.
Hill, Susan. Mrs. de Winter. Sinclair-Stevenson, 1993.
Hill, Susan, editor. People: Essays & Poems. Chatto and Windus, 1983.
Hill, Susan. “Proof of the pudding”. The Guardian, p. Review 2.
Hill, Susan. Strange Meeting. Hamish Hamilton, 1971.
Hill, Susan. “Susan Hill”. Susan Hill.
Reynolds, Margaret et al. Susan Hill: The Essential Guide to Contemporary Literature. Vintage, 2003.
Hill, Susan. The Albatross and Other Stories. Hamish Hamilton, 1971.