Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
Antonia Fraser
Standard Name: Fraser, Antonia
Birth Name: Antonia Pakenham
Styled: Lady Antonia Pakenham
Married Name: Lady Antonia Fraser
Married Name: Lady Antonia Pinter
The writing of AF
, who published her first book in 1954 and remains active in the early twenty-first century, falls into several distinct categories. She engaged first in children's writing, then in historical scholarship, much of it biographical and concerned with the lives of women in particular, then in detective fiction. She has also published journalism and edited anthologies. Most highly regarded as a historian, she has also had success with her thrillers and recent memoirs.
The final speech in A Kind of Alaska made Antonia Fraser
(seeing it in the theatre for at least the second time) begin to sob, and continue to weep uncontrollably after the curtain came down...
Textual Features
Harold Pinter
Antonia Fraser
called The Rooma savage, melancholy play which ends in appalling on stage physical violence. None of Pinter's other mature plays do this: he learned to keep the violence either offstage or in...
Literary responses
Harold Pinter
He had heard the news of the award on 13 October, and soon learned that it had transformed his life into that of a celebrity. He was too ill to travel to Stockholm for the...
Family and Intimate relationships
Harold Pinter
HP
intended to marry Antonia Fraser
on the eve of his fiftieth birthday, but at the last moment Vivien Merchant
refused to sign the decree absolute.
Fraser, Antonia. Must You Go?. Random House of Canada.
120-1
politics
Harold Pinter
HP
and Antonia Fraser
hosted a dinner meeting which launched an informal Labour philosophy group calling itself therefore the June 20 Group
.
Fraser, Antonia. Must You Go?. Random House of Canada.
153-5
Textual Production
Harold Pinter
HP
and his wife Antonia Fraser
received advance, numbered copies of Pinter's Poems, edited by her and published by the Greville Press
.
Fraser, Antonia. Must You Go?. Random House of Canada.
Bennett, Ronan. “The Country Girl’s Home Truths”. Guardian Unlimited.
1
Literary responses
Nancy Mitford
The Blessing did not do so well as its two predecessors; Antonia Fraser
feels that it marked a decline in fictional achievement.
Fraser, Antonia. “A Most Superior Street”. Spectator.co.uk. Champagne for the brain.
NM
wrote that My Blessing has had the most awful reviews you ever...
Literary responses
Nancy Mitford
Historian A. J. P. Taylor
wrote in the Manchester Guardian: All who admired The Pursuit of Love will be delighted to hear that its characters have appeared again, this time in fancy dress. They...
Literary responses
Marghanita Laski
Reviews were mixed. The San Francisco Chronicle called this a tour-de-force of its kind,, a little jewel of horror. The Times Literary Supplement dismissed it as surprisingly sentimental and not a very original story...
Family and Intimate relationships
Judith Kazantzis
JK
's eldest sister won fame as a writer specialising in history, historical biography, and detective stories under her first married name of Antonia Fraser
.
Literary responses
Margaret Forster
Another historical biographer, Antonia Fraser
, responded positively (in the Sunday Times) to MF
's unusual emphasis in this book, and appreciated its accomplished mixture of skillful narrative and psychological insight.
“Dictionary of Literary Biography online”. Gale Databases: Literature Resource Center-LRC.
155
Literary responses
Eleanor Farjeon
In response to the broadcasting of Kings and Queens in 2002, both Antonia Fraser
and John Julius Norwich
confessed that as children they had learned all their history from these poems; the reprint quickly sold...
Reception
Caryl Churchill
Antonia Fraser
(who did not see the play but heard the author describe it) thought this Vivid, horrifying—and not all that unfair.
Fraser, Antonia. Must You Go?. Random House of Canada.
