A. S. Byatt
Dame Antonia Susan Byatt,
DBE, (born
August 24,
1936,
Sheffield,
England) has been hailed by some as one of the great
postmodern novelists in
Britain. She is usually known as
A. S. Byatt.
Byatt was educated at
Newnham College Cambridge,
Bryn Mawr in
Pennsylvania, USA and
Somerville College,
Oxford, though her research grant to the latter institution (dependent on single status) ended with her first marriage. She lectured at London University extra-murally, the
Central School of Art and Design and from 1972 to 1981 at
University College London. Since becoming a full-time writer, Byatt has published several novels, most notably
Possession, which won the prestigious
Booker Prize in
1990. Two of her works have been adapted into
motion pictures:
Possession and
Angels & Insects.
Also well-known for her short stories, Byatt is allegedly influenced by
Henry James and
George Eliot as well as
Emily Dickinson,
T. S. Eliot, and
Robert Browning, as she merges
realism and
naturalism with the fantasies of
Victorian literature. Byatt prefers to offer fantasy not as an
escape, but as an alternative to, everyday life, creating what is often termed a "hybrid
genre", a combination of experimental and realistic work.
A. S. Byatt's first novel,
Shadow of a Sun, the story of a young girl growing up in the shadow of a dominant father, was published in 1964 and was followed by
The Game (1967), a study of the relationship between two sisters.
The Virgin in the Garden (1978) is the first book in a quartet about the members of a Yorkshire family. The story continues in
Still Life (1985), which won the PEN/Macmillan Silver Pen Award, and
Babel Tower (1996). The fourth (and final) novel in the quartet is
A Whistling Woman (2002). The quartet describes mid-20th-century Britain and Frederica's life as the quintessential bluestocking -- one of the first women to study at Cambridge and, later, a divorcée with a young son making a new life in London. Like
Babel Tower,
A Whistling Woman covers the '60s and dips into the utopian and revolutionary dreams of the time.
Byatt's younger sister,
Margaret Drabble, is also a successful novelist, and the rivalry between the two is legendary, although of uncertain origin. It has been suggested by some that, before becoming successful in her own right, Byatt resented her sister because Drabble gained a starred double-first over her own mere double-first. Drabble herself suggests that part of the rift is due, after the death of Byatt's son in a car accident, to the guilt she felt that her own children survived (this reported by Suzie Mackenzie of the UK's
Guardian Unlimited.) Byatt has stated publicly that Drabble's depiction of their mother in Drabble's book
The Peppered Moth angered her.
More recently, A. S. Byatt caused controversy by suggesting that the popularity of
J. K. Rowling's
Harry Potter series of books is because they are "written for people whose imaginative lives are confined to TV cartoons, and the exaggerated (more exciting, not threatening) mirror-worlds of soaps, reality TV and celebrity gossip." In her editorial column in the
New York Times newspaper, she scathingly attacked adult readers of the series as uncultured, claiming that "they don't have the skills to tell ersatz magic from the real thing, for as children they daily invested the ersatz with what imagination they had."
After the column appeared in the newspaper, her editorial was described by
Salon.com contributing writer Charles Taylor as "upfront in its snobbishness." He also suggested that Byatt's claims may be due to jealousy towards Rowling's commercial success.
In an article in the Guardian, the author
Fay Weldon defended A. S. Byatt in this controversy over Harry Potter, and praised her courage for speaking out. "She is absolutely right that it is not what the poets hoped for, but this is not poetry, it is readable, saleable, everyday, useful prose," Weldon said. She said she found the sight of adults reading the Potter series troubling, adding: "Byatt does have a point in everything she says but at the same time she sounds like a bit of a spoilsport. She is being a party pooper but then the party pooper is often right."
She was awarded a
CBE in 1990, then advanced a
DBE in 1999.
Shadow of a Sun Chatto & Windus, 1964
Degrees of Freedom: The Early Novels of Iris Murdoch Chatto & Windus, 1965
The Game Chatto & Windus, 1967
Wordsworth and Coleridge in Their Time Nelson, 1970
Iris Murdoch: A Critical Study Longman, 1976
The Virgin in the Garden Chatto & Windus, 1978
Still Life Chatto & Windus, 1985
Sugar and Other Stories Chatto & Windus, 1987
Unruly Times: Wordsworth and Coleridge, Poetry and Life Hogarth Press, 1989
George Eliot: Selected Essays, Poems and Other Writings (editor with Nicholas Warren) Penguin, 1990
Possession: A Romance Chatto & Windus, 1990
Passions of the Mind: Selected Writings Chatto & Windus, 1991
Angels & Insects Chatto & Windus, 1992
The Matisse Stories Chatto & Windus, 1993
The Djinn in the Nightingale's Eye Chatto & Windus, 1994
Imagining Characters: Six Conversations about Women Writers (with Ignes Sodre) Chatto & Windus, 1995
New Writing Volume 4 (editor with Alan Hollinghurst) Vintage, 1995
Babel Tower Chatto & Windus, 1996
New Writing Volume 6 (editor with Peter Porter) Vintage, 1997
Elementals: Stories of Fire and Ice Chatto & Windus, 1998
Oxford Book of English Short Stories (editor) Oxford University Press, 1998
On Histories and Stories: Selected Essays Chatto & Windus, 2000
The Biographer's Tale Chatto & Windus, 2000
Portraits in Fiction Chatto & Windus, 2001
The Bird Hand Book (with photographs by Victor Schrager) Graphis (New York), 2001
A Whistling Woman Chatto & Windus, 2002
Little Black Book of Stories Chatto & Windus, 2003
*1986 PEN/Macmillan Silver Pen Award
Still Life*1990
Booker Prize for Fiction
Possession: A Romance*1990
CBE*1990 Irish Times International Fiction Prize
Possession: A Romance*1991 Commonwealth Writers Prize (Eurasia Region, Best Book)
Possession: A Romance*1995
Premio Malaparte (Italy)
*1998 Mythopoeic Fantasy Award for Adult Literature
The Djinn in the Nightingale's Eye*1999
DBE*2002 Shakespeare Prize (Germany)
She has been granted the title of "Duchess of Morpho Eugenia" by the Spanish writer
Javier Marías, claimant to the
micronational title of
king of Redonda.
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A. S. Byatt Resources on the Web*
Interview (2003)
