Penelope Lively

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.{{cite web |url=https://www.britannica.com/biography/Penelope-Lively |title=Dame Penelope Lively |publisher=britannica.com |access-date=10 January 2018}}

Lively published more than twenty books for children, achieving particular recognition with The Ghost of Thomas Kempe and A Stitch in Time. 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. For the latter she won the 1976 Whitbread Children's Book Award.{{Cite web|url=http://www.costabookawards.com/downloads/PastWinners.pdf |title=Costa Book Awards |date=2009-12-29 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20091229131124/http://www.costabookawards.com/downloads/PastWinners.pdf |archive-date=2009-12-29 |access-date=2019-06-26}} 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.{{Cite book|url=https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/penelope-lively-11/a-stitch-in-time-4/|title=A STITCH IN TIME by Penelope Lively {{!}} Kirkus Reviews|language=en}}

Lively's first novel for adults, The Road to Lichfield, was published in 1977 and made the shortlist for the Booker Prize.[http://themanbookerprize.com/fiction/1977 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'] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190514042854/https://themanbookerprize.com/fiction/1977 |date=14 May 2019 }} at themanbookerprize.com, Accessed 15 April 2018 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. 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)[https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18114275-dancing-fish-and-ammonites 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 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.

Lively married academic and political theorist Jack Lively in 1957. They had a son and a daughter. Her husband died in 1998.{{cite news |last1=Reeve |first1=Andrew |title=Obituary: Professor Jack Lively |url=https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/obituary-professor-jack-lively-1181477.html |archive-url=https://ghostarchive.org/archive/20220525/https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/obituary-professor-jack-lively-1181477.html |archive-date=25 May 2022 |url-access=subscription |url-status=live |access-date=7 March 2019 |newspaper=The Independent |date=30 October 1998}} She currently lives in London. Her house contains paintings, woodcuts and Egyptian potsherds.{{cite news |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/04/books/review/penelope-lively-profile-purple-swamp-hen.html |title='A Writer Writes': Penelope Lively's Fiction Defies the Test of Time |work=The New York Times |date=4 May 2017 | access-date=11 Jan 2018|last1=McGrath |first1=Charles }}

The journalist Valentine Low is Lively's half-brother.{{cite news|url=https://www.theguardian.com/media/2008/may/09/thetimes.pressandpublishing|title=Low joins Times from Standard|author=Chris Tryhorn|date=9 May 2008|work=The Guardian|accessdate=24 September 2022}}

Lively is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. She is also a vice-president of the Friends of the British Library.{{cite web|url=http://www.bl.uk/supportus/pdf/friendsannrep0607.pdf|title=Friends of the British Library Annual Report 2006/07|access-date=7 September 2009|archive-date=15 April 2010|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100415020637/http://www.bl.uk/supportus/pdf/friendsannrep0607.pdf|url-status=dead}} 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.{{London Gazette |issue=60009 |date=31 December 2011 |page=6 |supp=y}}

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.{{cite web |url=http://penelopelively.co.uk/ |title=Penelope Lively |publisher=penelopelively.co.uk |access-date=10 Jan 2018}}[http://themanbookerprize.com/books/moon-tiger-by Moon Tiger By Penelope Lively -Published by Deutsch] Accolades: The Man Booker Prize 1987 Winner at themanbookerprize.com, Accessed 24 April 2018

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• 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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• The Road to Lichfield (1977) – Booker Prize finalist
• Nothing Missing but the Samovar, and other stories (1978), collection – Southern Arts Literature Prize
• Treasures of Time (1979) – Arts Council National Book Award
• Judgment Day (1980)
• Next to Nature, Art (1982)
• Perfect Happiness (1983)
• Corruption, and other stories (1984), collection
• According to Mark (1984) – Booker Prize finalist
• Pack of Cards, collected short stories 1978–1986 (1986), collection
• Moon Tiger (1987) – Booker Prize; Whitbread finalist
• Passing On (1989)
• City of the Mind (1991)
• Cleopatra's Sister (1993)
• Heat Wave (1996)
• Beyond the Blue Mountains (1997), collection (U.S. title: The Five Thousand and One Nights)Beyond the Blue Mountains (1997) London: Viking {{ISBN|9780670869053}}
• Spiderweb (1998)
• The Photograph (2003)
• Making it up (2005)
• Consequences (2007)
• Family Album (2009) – Costa finalist
• How It All Began (2011)
• The Purple Swamp Hen and Other stories (2017)
• Metamorphosis (2021), collection

• 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{{cite news|author=Parker, Peter|title=Ammonites and Leaping Fish, Penelope LIvely, review|date=21 October 2013|newspaper=The Telegraph|url=https://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/bookreviews/10386510/Ammonites-and-Leaping-Fish-by-Penelope-Lively-review.html}} (subsequently Dancing Fish and Ammonites: A Memoir)
• Life in the Garden (2018), memoir

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{{reflist |25em |refs=

[https://web.archive.org/web/20071011214845/http://www.carnegiegreenaway.org.uk/livingarchive/title.php?id=85 (Carnegie Winner 1973)]. Living Archive: Celebrating the Carnegie and Greenaway Winners. CILIP. Archived copy of page at carnegiegreenaway.org.uk, Retrieved 17 August 2012.

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{{Portal |Children's literature |Novels |Speculative fiction }}

• {{british council|penelope-lively}}
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• [https://web.archive.org/web/20091112172335/http://www.theinterviewonline.co.uk/library/books/penelope-lively-interview.aspx Audio slideshow interview] about Family Album on [http://www.theinterviewonline.co.uk/ The Interview Online]
• {{LCAuth|n79086308|Penelope Lively|70|ue}}
• [https://digitalcollections.hclib.org/digital/collection/p17208coll5/id/65541/rec/1 Interview with Penelope Lively], ALL ABOUT KIDS! TV Series, Episode #165 (1994)
• [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MQ5_IqFEhHk Interview with Penelope Lively], A DISCUSSION WITH National Authors on Tour TV Series, Episode #79 (1994)

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Category:1933 births

Category:Living people

Category:Novelists from Cairo

Category:British children's writers

Category:British fantasy writers

Category:Booker Prize winners

Category:Carnegie Medal in Literature winners

Category:Dames Commander of the Order of the British Empire

Category:Fellows of the Royal Society of Literature

Category:Alumni of St Anne's College, Oxford

Category:20th-century British novelists

Category:21st-century British novelists

Category:20th-century British women writers

Category:21st-century British women writers

Category:British women short story writers

Category:British women children's writers

Category:British women science fiction and fantasy writers

Category:British women novelists