{"product_id":"anita-brookner-art-and-life-9781784744687","title":"Anita Brookner: Art and Life","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eThe groundbreaking biography of Booker Prize-winning novelist and art historian Anita Brookner, from one of our leading literary biographers.   'It would be hard to think of a better biographer for this uniquely contradictory intellectual.... piercingly intelligent... Lee's biography ... has joie de vivre, high humour and energetic compassion for the multiplying complexities of the human mind' The Observer  The groundbreaking biography of Booker Prize-winning novelist and art historian Anita Brookner, from one of our leading literary biographers. Hermione Lee reveals the full story of a brilliant, idiosyncratic and complex woman and goes deep into Anita Brookner's marvellous work in all its stylishness and daring.  Born in south London in 1928, Brookner came from a family of middle-class, Polish-Jewish immigrants. Her parents were anxious and unhappy. Until she was well into her thirties, she nursed her invalid mother with a painful mixture of love and resentment. She would have liked a marriage and children; instead, she lived alone and became a great writer of solitude, self-knowledge and survival.  For many years she worked at the Courtauld Institute, teaching French Romanticism in art, and influencing generations of students. In her fifties she began to write fiction: her first novel was the wryly titled A Start in Life. In 1984, she won the Booker Prize for Hotel du Lac; after that, a novel appeared almost every year until her eighties.  In her lifetime Brookner was seen as an object of wonder and fascination. She was a formidable and inspiring teacher, an enormously knowledgeable, witty and perceptive art historian and critic, and a novelist like no other. Her extraordinary fictions of heroic solitude, romantic passion, longing and lethal social comedy, written with elegance and impeccable control, gained her a devoted following. But she also attracted hostility and bafflement, often from readers challenged by the unsentimental realism of her fierce, strange and moving books.\u003ch4\u003eDetails\u003c\/h4\u003e\u003cp\u003eISBN13: 9781784744687\u003cbr\u003e\u003cspan\u003eFormat: Hardback\u003cbr\u003e\u003cspan\u003eNumber of Pages: 544\u003cbr\u003e\u003cspan\u003eEdition: \u003cbr\u003e\u003cspan\u003ePublication Date: 01 Dec 2026\u003cbr\u003e\u003cspan\u003ePublisher: Vintage Publishing\u003cbr\u003e\u003cspan\u003ePublication City, Country: London, United Kingdom\u003cbr\u003e\u003cspan\u003eDimensions (cm): 24.3(H)x16.5(L)x4.7(W)816\u003cbr\u003e\u003cspan\u003eWeight (gm): 816\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003ch4\u003eAuthor Biography\u003c\/h4\u003eHERMIONE LEE is a biographer, Professor Emeritus of English Literature and former President of Wolfson College, Oxford. Her writings include biographies of Virginia Woolf (1996), Edith Wharton (2006), Penelope Fitzgerald (2013) and Tom Stoppard (2020). She is a fellow of the British Academy and the Royal Society of Literature and in 2024 was made a Dame Grand Cross (GBE) for services to literary scholarship and literature. She lives in Oxford.\u003ch4\u003eReviews\u003c\/h4\u003e‘A\u003cb\u003e rich and fascinating book, beautifully written, \u003c\/b\u003ewhich grasps the contradictions of Brookner’s character and work’ * Tessa Hadley, author of THE PARTY *\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eTremendous… \u003c\/b\u003eIn some ways, Lee’s biography is the exact opposite of a Brookner novel. \u003cb\u003eIt has \u003ci\u003ejoie de vivre\u003c\/i\u003e, high humour and energetic compassion\u003c\/b\u003e for the multiplying complexities of the human mind. \u003cb\u003eIt would be hard to think of a better biographer for this uniquely contradictory intellectual\u003c\/b\u003e * Observer *\u003cbr\u003eLee…presents Brookner as daring, funny and decisive…\u003cb\u003e [Brookner] surely have recognized the quality of this delicate, judicious and thorough portrait\u003c\/b\u003e of such a contradictory, uneven, idiosyncratic person * Independent *\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eLee offers genuinely transporting literary criticism, \u003c\/b\u003eunearthing the elegance and complexity of the work… \u003cb\u003eThis astute and tireless biography succeeds, against the odds, in unearthing the author\u003c\/b\u003e * Guardian *\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e[A] thoroughly absorbing and beguiling biography…\u003c\/b\u003esurely the woman [Brookner] herself might grudgingly approve * Spectator *\u003cbr\u003eHermione Lee has written \u003cb\u003ea wonderful biography, \u003c\/b\u003efond but not foolish. Her rigour means that she never simply equates the novelist’s heroines with their creator but offers instead\u003cb\u003e a set of nuanced readings \u003c\/b\u003eshow the ways in which art and life were engaged in a constant dialogue * Literary Review *\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eOne emerges from Lee’s biography deeply moved,\u003c\/b\u003e as much by her heroic scholarly endeavour as by the formidable woman she seeks to uncover. It’s not hard to see why Brookner is finding a new audience among a generation of women choosing...a solitary life * Sunday Times *\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eExhaustively researched, psychologically penetrating, and deeply empathetic,\u003c\/b\u003e this, the first biography of Brookner, brings us to fully understand the brilliant, complex and fascinating person that she was. And the result is \u003cb\u003emagnificent\u003c\/b\u003e * Daily Telegraph *\u003cbr\u003eBetween the silences, secrets and equivocations emerges \u003cb\u003ea gripping and illuminating portrait\u003c\/b\u003e of a life dedicated to its art. One likes to think that while she might not have fully approved, \u003cb\u003eBrookner would nevertheless admire the result\u003c\/b\u003e * Financial Times *","brand":"Hermione Lee","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":49279532564697,"sku":"9781784744687","price":59.99,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0502\/9530\/8441\/files\/9781784744687.jpg?v=1789818634","url":"https:\/\/www.arielbooks.com.au\/products\/anita-brookner-art-and-life-9781784744687","provider":"Ariel","version":"1.0","type":"link"}