Hilary Mantel (1952-2022)

Author Hilary Mantel, 70, died September 22, 2022. She was best known for historical novels, including the celebrated Wolf Hall trilogy about the life of Thomas Cromwell, but she also wrote a few works of genre interest, including debut novel Every Day Is Mother’s Day (1985), Fludd (1989), and Beyond Black (2005).

Mantel was born July 6, 1952 in Glossop, Derbyshire, England. She attended the London School of Economics and Sheffield University, and worked as a social work assistant at a hospital. She married Gerald McEwan, a geologist, in 1972; they divorced in 1981 but remarried a year later. They lived abroad in Botswana and Saudi Arabia before returning to the UK in the mid-’80s.

She wrote 17 books, winning the Booker Prize for Wolf Hall (2009) and sequel Bring Up the Bodies (2012); the trilogy as a whole has sold millions of copies worldwide. She became a Fellow of the Royal Society of literature in 1990, in 2006 she was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire, and in 2014 a Dame of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire by the Queen of England.