Penelope Lively

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Dame Penelope Margaret Lively Template:Post-nominals (née Low; born 17 March 1933)<ref name=Dame/> is a British writer of fiction for both children and adults. Lively has won both the Booker Prize (Moon Tiger, 1987) and the Carnegie Medal for British children's books (The Ghost of Thomas Kempe, 1973).

Children's fiction

Lively first achieved success with children's fiction. Her first book, Astercote, was published by Heinemann in 1970. It is a low fantasy novel set in a Cotswolds village and the neighbouring woodland site of a medieval village wiped out by Plague.<ref name=Dame>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

Lively published more than twenty books for children, achieving particular recognition with The Ghost of Thomas Kempe and A Stitch in Time.<ref name=Dame/> For the former she won the 1973 Carnegie Medal from the Library Association, recognising the year's best children's book by a British subject.<ref name=medal1973/> For the latter she won the 1976 Whitbread Children's Book Award.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> The three novels feature local history, roughly 600, 300, and 100 years past, in ways that approach time slip but do not posit travel to the past.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>

Adult works

Lively's novel Going Back was initially published as a children's book because, up to then she had only written books for children. The story is largely set during World War II at a country house where a local man is a conscientious objector and a young boy and his sister meet the man and discuss aspects of the war. Superficially the sustained focus on the boy and girl make it seem suitable for children, and there is no sex or bad language that would make it more appropriate for adults. But this long-ago story of the children during World War II is being remembered by the sister when she is a grown up woman, returning to the country house. Although this is not highlighted in the novel, by the end of the World War II remembering, the woman makes a powerful emotional connection with how she and her brother responded to their friend deciding to sat aside his pacifist objections and join the military, and this memory from World War II is suddenly linked with her recollection of herself as a young adult, grieving when her brother was killed serving in the military during the Korean War. The importance of these adult memories later resulted in Going Back being reissued as an adult novel after Lively began to establish a new reputation as a writer for adults. Going Back is a novel that defies categories, as is her later novel The House in Norham Gardens, with the central character being an orphan teenager. Published as a children's book, it is better categorised as for "Young Adults", and the two important elderly maiden great-aunts who are raising the teenager make much of the book "adult" in many ways.

Lively's first novel expressly published for adults, The Road to Lichfield, was published in 1977 and made the shortlist for the Booker Prize.<ref>The Man Booker Prize -fiction, 1977: The Shortlist: '...Peter Smart’s Confessions/ Great Granny Webster/ Shadows on our Skin/ The Road to Lichfield/ Quartet in Autumn' Template:Webarchive at themanbookerprize.com, Accessed 15 April 2018</ref> She repeated the feat in 1984 with According to Mark, and won the 1987 prize for Moon Tiger, which tells the story of a woman's tempestuous life as she lies dying in a hospital bed.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> As with all of Lively's fiction, Moon Tiger is marked by close attention to the power of memory, the impact of the past upon the present, and the tensions between "official" and personal histories.

She explored the same themes more explicitly in her non-fiction works, including A House Unlocked (2001) and Oleander, Jacaranda: A Childhood Perceived (1994), a memoir of her Egyptian childhood. Her latest non-fiction work Ammonites & Leaping Fish: A Life in Time, (latterly known as Dancing Fish and Ammonites: A Memoir)<ref>Dancing Fish and Ammonites: A Memoir first published October 10th 2013; Original Title: Ammonites and Leaping Fish: A Life in Time at goodreads.com, Accessed 24 April 2018</ref> was published in 2013.

Besides novels and short stories, Lively has also written radio and television scripts, presented a radio programme, and contributed reviews and articles to various newspapers and journals.

Personal life

Lively married academic and political theorist Jack Lively in 1957.<ref name=thetimes/> They had a son and a daughter. Her husband died in 1998.<ref name="ReeveObit">Template:Cite news</ref> She currently lives in London.<ref name=Penelope/> Her house contains paintings, woodcuts and Egyptian potsherds.<ref name=thetimes>Template:Cite news</ref>

The journalist Valentine Low is Lively's half-brother.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

Honours

Lively is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> She is also a vice-president of the Friends of the British Library.<ref name="ar0607">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> She was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in 1989, Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in 2001, and Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE) in the 2012 New Year Honours for services to literature.<ref>Template:London Gazette</ref>

Lively was shortlisted for the Booker Prize: once in 1977 for her first novel, The Road to Lichfield, and again in 1984 for According to Mark. She won the 1987 Booker Prize for her novel Moon Tiger.<ref name=Penelope>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref><ref>Moon Tiger By Penelope Lively -Published by Deutsch Accolades: The Man Booker Prize 1987 Winner at themanbookerprize.com, Accessed 24 April 2018</ref>

Books

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Fiction for children

  • Astercote (1970)
  • The Whispering Knights (1971)
  • The Wild Hunt of Hagworthy (1971)
  • The Driftway (1972)
  • The Ghost of Thomas Kempe (1973) – Carnegie Medal
  • The House in Norham Gardens (1974)
  • Going Back (1975)
  • Boy Without a Name (1975)
  • A Stitch in Time (1976) – Whitbread Children's Book Award
  • The Stained Glass Window (1976), illustrated by Michael Pollard
  • Fanny's Sister (1976)
  • The Voyage of QV66 (1978)
  • Fanny and the Monsters (1979)
  • Fanny and the Battle of Potter's Piece (1980)
  • The Revenge of Samuel Stokes (1981)
  • Uninvited Ghosts and other stories (1984), collection
  • Dragon Trouble (1984), illus. Valerie Littlewood
  • Debbie and the Little Devil (1987)
  • A House Inside Out (1987)
  • Princess by Mistake (1993)
  • Judy and the Martian (1993)
  • The Cat, the Crow and the Banyan Tree (1994), illus. Terry Milne
  • Good Night, Sleep Tight (1995), illus. Adriano Gon
  • Two Bears and Joe (1995), illus. Jan Ormerod
  • Staying with Grandpa (1995)
  • A Martian Comes to Stay (1995)
  • The Disastrous Dog (1995), illus. Robert Bartlett
  • Ghostly Guests (1997)
  • One, Two, Three ... Jump! (1998), illus. Jan Ormerod
  • Dragon Trouble (1999), new edition illus. Andrew Rowland
  • In Search of a Homeland: The Story of The Aeneid (2001), illus. Ian Andrew

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Fiction for adults

Non-fiction

  • The Presence of the Past: An introduction to landscape history (1976)
  • Oleander, Jacaranda: a Childhood Perceived (1994), autobiographical
  • A House Unlocked (2001), autobiographical
  • Ammonites and Leaping Fish (2013), memoir<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> (subsequently Dancing Fish and Ammonites: A Memoir)
  • Life in the Garden (2018), memoir

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References

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