A.S. Byatt

A.S. Byatt (born August 24, 1936, Sheffield, England—died November 16, 2023) was an 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 tetralogy that chronicles 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).

During this time, Byatt wrote Possession (1990; film 2002), which is part mystery and part romance; in it Byatt developed two related stories, one set in the 19th century 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. Ragnarok: The End of the Gods (2011), a retelling of the Norse myth, is set during World War II and centres on a young girl who is evacuated to the countryside.

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); the career-spanning Medusa’s Ankles was published in 2021. She was also the author of Passions of the Mind (1991), a collection of essays, and Angels & Insects (1991; film 1995), a pair of novellas. Among her nonfiction works is Peacock & Vine (2016), about William Morris and Mariano Fortuny. Byatt was made Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE) in 1999.