Wiley-Blackwell Encyclopedia of Literature

Extract

In a long and prolific literary career (she has written over more than 40 works for adults and children), Penelope Lively has excelled in a number of genres: the ghost story, the romance, the historical novel, even science fiction. Her work for adults has been marked by a consistent spirit of experiment subtle enough to win the admiration of critics while never alienating a wider readership. Absorbing modernist and postmodernist modes, she is predominantly a realist writer whose work, both for children and for adults, questions our experience of time, memory, and history and challenges the codes and expectations of the “real.” From the publication of her first novel for children, Astercote ( 1970 ), Lively has enjoyed considerable recognition and success. Her fifth novel for children, The Ghost of Thomas Kempe ( 1973 ), won the Carnegie Medal while her ninth, A Stitch in Time ( 1976c ), won the Whitbread Prize. Her first collection of short stories, Nothing Missing but the Samovar ( 1978a ), won the Southern Arts Literature Prize. Her first novel for adults, The Road to Lichfield ( 1977 ), was shortlisted for the Booker Prize, as was According to Mark ( 1984a ). She won the Booker Prize in 1987 for Moon Tiger , the deathbed reflections on her own life and on the life of the twentieth century of an English writer, for whom history is a shifting kaleidoscope, without ... log in or subscribe to read full text