Anita Brookner

Anita Brookner
CBE
Born (1928-07-16)16 July 1928
Herne Hill, London, England
Died 10 March 2016(2016-03-10) (aged 87)
Occupation Art historian, novelist
Alma mater King's College London
Period 1981–2011
Genre Drama
Notable work Hotel du Lac

Anita Brookner CBE (16 July 1928 – 10 March 2016[1]) was an English award-winning novelist and art historian. She was Slade Professor of Fine Art at the University of Cambridge from 1967 to 1968 and was the first woman to hold this visiting professorship. She was awarded the 1984 Man Booker Prize for her novel Hotel du Lac.

Life and death

Brookner was born in Herne Hill, a suburb of London.[2][3] She was the only child of Newson Bruckner, a Jewish immigrant from Poland, and Maude Schiska, a singer whose father had emigrated from Poland and founded a tobacco factory. Maude changed the family's surname to Brookner because of anti-German sentiment in Britain. Anita Brookner had a lonely childhood, although her grandmother and uncle lived with the family, and her parents, secular Jews, opened their house to Jewish refugees escaping Nazi persecution during the 1930s and World War II. “I have said that I am one of the loneliest women in London” she said in her Paris Review interview [4][5]

She was educated at the private James Allen's Girls' School. In 1949 she received a BA in History from King's College London, and in 1953 a doctorate in Art History from the Courtauld Institute of Art, University of London.[6]

Brookner never married, but took care of her parents as they aged. She died on 10 March 2016, at the age of 87.

Career

Academic

In 1967, she became the first woman to hold the Slade Professorship of Fine Art at Cambridge University. She was promoted to Reader at the Courtauld Institute of Art in 1977, where she worked until her retirement in 1988. Among her students at the Courtauld was noted art historian Olivier Berggruen, whose graduate work she advised.[7] She was a Fellow of King's College London and of Murray Edwards College, Cambridge.

Novelist

Already a published author of nonfiction, Brookner published her first novel, A Start In Life (1981), at the age of 53. Thereafter, she published roughly a novel a year. Brookner was highly regarded as a stylist. Her novels explore themes of emotional loss and difficulties associated with fitting into society, and typically depict intellectual, middle-class women, who suffer isolation and disappointments in love. Many of Brookner's characters are the children of European immigrants to Britain; a number appear to be of Jewish descent.[2][8] Hotel du Lac (1984), her fourth novel, was awarded the Booker Prize.[9]

Honours

Publications

  • Greuze: 1725–1805: The Rise and Fall of an Eighteenth-century Phenomenon (1972) ISBN 9780236176786 (on Jean-Baptiste Greuze)
  • Jacques-Louis David (1980) ISBN 9780064305075 (on the history painter Jacques-Louis David)
  • A Start In Life (1981, US title The Debut) ISBN 9780241976500
  • Providence (1982) ISBN 9780307826213
  • Look at Me (1983) ISBN 9780307826206
  • Hotel du Lac (1984) ISBN 9780307826220 (Booker Prize winner)
  • Family and Friends (1985) ISBN 9780307826237
  • A Misalliance (1986) ISBN 9780307826343
  • A Friend from England (1987) ISBN 9780307826336
  • Latecomers (1988) ISBN 9780307826183
  • Lewis Percy (1989) ISBN 9780307826190
  • Brief Lives (1990) ISBN 9780307826251
  • A Closed Eye (1991) ISBN 9780307826275
  • Fraud (1992) ISBN 9780307826268
  • A Family Romance (1993, US title Dolly) ISBN 9780140234060
  • A Private View (1994) ISBN 9780307826299
  • Incidents in the Rue Laugier (1995) ISBN 9780307826305
  • Altered States (1996) ISBN 9780307826312
  • Visitors (1997) ISBN 9780307826329
  • Falling Slowly (1998) ISBN 9780307826244
  • Undue Influence (1999) ISBN 9780307492364
  • The Bay of Angels (2001) ISBN 9781400033010
  • The Next Big Thing (2002, US title Making Things Better) (longlisted for the Booker Prize)
  • The Rules of Engagement (2003) ISBN 9780141910222
  • Leaving Home (2005) ISBN 9781400095650
  • Strangers (2009) (shortlisted for James Tait Black Memorial Prize) ISBN 9780307477583
  • "At The Hairdressers" (2011) (novella, available only as an e-book)

See also

References

  1. ↑ "Anita Brookner, Booker Prize-winning author, dies age 87, Times announces". BBC News. 14 March 2016. Retrieved 14 March 2016.
  2. 1 2 Dr Anita Brookner at British Council: Literature
  3. ↑ "Anita Brookner, 1928– Notebooks, ca. 1986–1994". Harry Ransom Center. The University of Texas at Austin. Archived from the original on 10 March 2009.
  4. ↑ "Anita Brookner, The Art of Fiction No. 98". Paris Review. Retrieved 2018-09-20.
  5. ↑ "In Praise of Anita Brookner - The New York Times". Nytimes.com. Retrieved 2018-09-20.
  6. ↑ Cowell, Alan (2016-03-15). "Anita Brookner, Whose Bleak Fiction Won the Booker Prize, Dies at 87". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2016-03-17.
  7. ↑ Olivier Berggruen. "Olivier Berggruen on Anita Brookner (1928–2016) - artforum.com / passages". Artforum.com. Retrieved 2016-06-21.
  8. ↑ Malcolm, Cheryl Alexander. "Understanding Anita Brookner". University of South Carolina. Archived from the original on 31 December 2001.
  9. ↑ McNay, Michael (15 March 2016). "Anita Brookner obituary". The Guardian. Retrieved 20 September 2018.
  • Anita Brookner Collection at the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin
  • Shusha Guppy (Fall 1987). "Anita Brookner, The Art of Fiction No. 98". Paris Review.
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