A.S. Byatt (1936-2023)
Writer A.S. Byatt, 87, died November 16, 2023. Though best known for her literary fiction and critical writing, Byatt occasionally wrote work including speculative elements. Books of genre interest include Booker Prize winner Possession: A Romance (1990) and Ragnarok: The End of the Gods (2011). The Children’s Book (2009) is based on the life of children’s writer E. Nesbit.
Byatt’s short work often incorporated fantastic elements, and appears in collections Sugar and Other Stories (1987), Angels & Insects (1992), The Djinn in the Nightingale’s Eye (1994), Elementals: Stories of Fire and Ice (1998), Little Black Book of Stories (2003), and Medusa’s Ankles: Selected Stories (2021). She also edited The Oxford Book of English Short Stories (1999).
Antonia Susan Drabble was born in Sheffield, England on August 24, 1936. She attended the University of Cambridge, and did graduate work at Bryn Mawr College and at Somerville College Oxford. She wrote and edited a great deal of literary criticism, including books on Iris Murdoch, William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and George Eliot. She taught English at University College from 1972 to 1983.
She married Ian Byatt in 1959, divorcing in 1969; she later married Peter John Duffy. Byatt is survived by her husband, three daughters, and three siblings, including author Margaret Drabble. Her son Charles predeceased her in the early 1970s.
