Biographies of loved authors by Anne Wellman
Anne Wellman has written four biographies of much loved female authors of the twentieth century: Anne Tyler, Monica Dickens, Betty MacDonald and a collective biography of six writers of the 1960s.
Very sorry to hear of the death of talented Lynne Reid Banks at the age of 94. Lynne, author of The L-Shaped Room and the children's work The Indian in the Cupboard, was one of the ‘angry young women’ of the 1960s, all of whom had their best known novel made into an iconic film (The L-Shaped Room starred Leslie Caron and Tom Bell). You can read about Lynne's life in my collective biography Angry Young Women.
Rest in peace, Lynne.
4th April 2024
A Life of Anne Tyler
Anne Tyler has been been acknowledged as one of America's greatest living novelists. She is a Pulitzer Prize winner and multiple nominee. An inspiring chronicler of what lies beneath the everyday, she has written twenty-four acclaimed works, her first in 1964 when she was just twenty-three, and her most recent in 2022 at the age of eighty. Her best-known works include Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant and The Accidental Tourist, made into an Oscar-winning movie. She is greatly loved by her legions of fans all around the world.
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Betty: The Story of Betty MacDonald, Author of The Egg and I
The Egg and I is the hugely funny account of Betty MacDonald’s life as the wife of a chicken farmer in the remote American Northwest. She went on to write a number of highly popular children's books and three more comic memoirs about her life in the West, ranging from a rough mining community in Montana to the lush Olympic Peninsula and the bright lights of big city Seattle.
To a great degree Betty's life is in her work, but because of its fictional elements and humorous exaggeration her voice is often an unreliable one. Questions remain for every fan of Betty's books. What really happened? What became of Betty and her family?
This is Betty's true story.
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Angry Young Women: six writers of the sixties
A Taste of Honey, The L-Shaped Room, The Pumpkin Eater, Up the Junction, Poor Cow, The Millstone, and Georgy Girl - works that are seen as defining radical female literature in 1960s Britain. Each was made into a film, some of them equally iconic.
Shelagh Delaney, Lynne Reid Banks, Penelope Mortimer, Nell Dunn, Margaret Drabble, Margaret Forster. Each of these writers, at one time or another, was labelled an 'Angry Young Woman'.
Just how angry were they?
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Monica: A Life of Monica Dickens
Charles Dickens' great-granddaughter Monica Dickens was one of the most celebrated writers of her day. Born into the upper classes, as a bored and unhappy debutante in the 1930s she took the incredible step of going into domestic service. One Pair of Hands, the book Monica wrote about her exploits as a cook and housemaid, sold in the millions. She went on to train as a nurse, then become a GI bride, and in her new homeland started the first branch of the Samaritans. She wrote about all of it, and more, producing over 30 much loved novels and works of nonfiction.
This is the story of an exceptional writer and a life well lived.
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