A.S. Byatt
born Aug. 24, 1936, Sheffield, Eng.
English scholar, literary critic, and
novelist known for her erudite works whose
characters are often academics or artists
commenting on the intellectual process.
Byatt is the daughter of a judge and the
sister of novelist Margaret Drabble. She was
educated at the University of Cambridge,
Bryn Mawr College, and the University of
Oxford and then taught at University
College, London, from 1972 to 1983, when she
left to write full-time. Among her critical
works are Degrees of Freedom (1965), the
first full-length study of the British
writer Iris Murdoch.
Despite the publication of two novels,
The Shadow of a Sun (1964) and The Game
(1967), Byatt continued to be considered
mainly a scholar and a critic until the
publication of her highly acclaimed The
Virgin in the Garden (1978). The novel is a
complex story set in 1953, at the time of
the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II. It was
written as the first of a projected
tetralogy that would chronicle the lives of
three members of one family from the
coronation to 1980. The second volume of the
series, Still Life (1985), concentrates on
the art of painting, and it was followed by
Babel Tower (1995) and A Whistling Woman
(2002). Possession (1990; film 2002), not
part of the tetralogy, is part mystery and
part romance; in it Byatt developed two
related stories, one set in the 19th and one
in the 20th century. Considered a brilliant
example of postmodernist fiction, it was a
popular success and was awarded the Booker
Prize for 1990. The Biographer’s Tale (2000)
is an erudite and occasionally esoteric
literary mystery, and The Children’s Book
(2009), following the family of a beloved
children’s author, incorporates historical
figures into a sweeping
turn-of-the-20th-century tale. In addition
to her novels, Byatt wrote several
collections of short stories, including
Sugar and Other Stories (1987), The Matisse
Stories (1993), and Elementals: Stories of
Fire and Ice (1998); Passions of the Mind
(1991), a collection of essays; and Angels &
Insects (1991; film 1995), a pair of
novellas. She was made a Dame of the British
Empire in 1999.
