Brenda Maddox

Brenda Maddox, Lady Maddox FRSL (24 February 1932 – 16 June 2019) was an American author, journalist, and biographer, who lived in the UK since 1959.[1]

Brenda Maddox
Born(1932-02-24)24 February 1932
Bridgewater, Massachusetts, U.S.
Died16 June 2019(2019-06-16) (aged 87)
OccupationBiographer
Journalist
NationalityAmerican
SpouseJohn Maddox
ChildrenBronwen Maddox, Bruno Maddox

Biography

Born in Bridgewater, Massachusetts in 1932.[2] She graduated from Harvard University (class of 1953) with a degree in English literature.[3] She also studied at the London School of Economics. She was a book reviewer for The Observer, The Times, New Statesman, The New York Times, and The Washington Post, and regularly contributed to BBC Radio 4 as a critic and commentator. Her biographies of Elizabeth Taylor, D.H. Lawrence, Nora Joyce, W. B. Yeats and Rosalind Franklin have been widely acclaimed. She received the Los Angeles Times Biography Award, the Silver PEN Award, the French Prix du Meilleur Livre Etranger, and the Whitbread Biography Prize.[1]

Maddox was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 1999.[4]

Maddox lived in London and spent time at her cottage near Brecon, Wales where she and her husband, Sir John Maddox (d. 2009), were actively involved within the local community. She was vice-president of the Hay-on-Wye Festival of Literature, a member of the Editorial Board of British Journalism Review, and a past chairman of the Broadcasting Press Guild. Maddox had two children and two stepchildren.[1]

Her best-known biography, that of James Joyce's wife Nora Barnacle, was made into a 2000 movie, Nora, starring Susan Lynch in the title role and Ewan McGregor as Joyce.[2]

Her biography of the scientist James Watson was published in 2016.

She died on 16 June 2019, aged 87.[5][1]

Bibliography
  • Beyond Babel: New Directions in Communications, London: The Trinity Press., 1972. ISBN 0-233-96004-X
  • The Half-Parent: Living with Other People's Children, London : Andre Deutsch, 1975. OCLC 723673316
  • Who's Afraid of Elizabeth Taylor? A Myth of Our Time, New York: M. Evans & Co., 1977. ISBN 0-87131-243-3
  • Nora: A Biography of Nora Joyce. London: Hamilton, 1988, ISBN 9780395365106, OCLC 901987872
  • D.H. Lawrence: The Story of a Marriage, New York: Simon & Schuster, 1994. ISBN 9781856192439, OCLC 185671236
  • Yeats's Ghosts: The Secret Life of W.B. Yeats, New York: HarperCollins, 1999. ISBN 0-06-017494-3
  • Rosalind Franklin: The Dark Lady of DNA, New York: HarperCollins, 2002. ISBN 9780006552116, OCLC 881159847
  • "Mother of DNA", New Humanist, 117 (2002): 3.
  • "The woman who cracked the BBC's glass ceiling" British Journalism Review. 13: 2 (2003): 69–72.
  • Maggie: The First Lady, London : Coronet, 2004. ISBN 9780340825464, OCLC 1065214664
  • "The whole world in his hand" The Times. May 27, 2006.
  • George Eliot: Novelist, Lover, Wife, London: HarperPress, 2009; also published as George Eliot in Love. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010.
  • Reading the Rocks: How Victorian Geologists Discovered the Secret of Life, Bloomsbury, 2017. ISBN 9781408879580,[6]

References
  1. Rocco, Fiammetta (June 28, 2019). "Brenda Maddox obituary". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved July 2, 2019.
  2. Genzlinger, Neil (June 27, 2019). "Brenda Maddox, Biographer Who Revealed Joyce's Muse, Dies at 87". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved July 5, 2019.
  3. Article inThe Washington Post
  4. "Royal Society of Literature All Fellows". Royal Society of Literature. Archived from the original on March 5, 2010. Retrieved August 10, 2010.
  5. "Brenda Maddox". The Daily Telegraph. June 22, 2019. Retrieved June 22, 2019.
  6. https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/reading-the-rocks-9781408879580/
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