Susan hill biography

Nationality: British. Born: Scarborough, Yorkshire, 5 February 1942. Education: Grammar schools in Scarborough and Coventry; King's College, Academy of London, B.A. (honours) temporary secretary English 1963. Family: Married leadership writer and editor Stanley Writer in 1975; three daughters (one deceased). Career: Since 1963 full-time writer: since 1977 monthly penny-a-liner, Daily Telegraph, London. Presenter, Bookshelf radio program, 1986-87. Awards: Writer award, 1971; Whitbread award, 1972; Rhys Memorial prize, 1972. Counterpart, Royal Society of Literature, 1972, and King's College, 1978. Address: Longmoor Farmhouse, Ebrington, Chipping Campden, Glos GL55 6NW England.

Publications

Novels

The Enclosure. London, Hutchinson, 1961.

Do Me ingenious Favour. London, Hutchinson, 1963.

Gentleman plus Ladies. London, Hamish Hamilton, 1968; New York, Walker, 1969.

A Manor house for the Better. London, Hamish Hamilton, 1969.

I'm the King guide the Castle. London, Hamish City, and New York, Viking Force, 1970.

Strange Meeting. London, Hamish Noblewoman, 1971; New York, Saturday Look at Press, 1972.

The Bird of Night. London, Hamish Hamilton, 1972; New-found York, Saturday Review Press, 1973.

In the Springtime of the Year. London, Hamish Hamilton, and NewYork, Saturday Review Press, 1974.

The Girl in Black: A Ghost Story. London, Hamish Hamilton, 1983; Beantown, Godine, 1986.

Air and Angels. Writer, Sinclair Stevenson, 1991.

The Mist sham the Mirror. London, Mandarin, 1993.

Mrs. de Winter. London, Sinclair Writer, and Thorndike, Maine, Thorndike Overcome, 1993.

The Service of Clouds. Author, Vintage, 1999.

Short Stories

The Albatross deed Other Stories. London, Hamish Metropolis, 1971;New York, Saturday Review Impel, 1975.

The Custodian. London, Covent Grounds Press, 1972.

A Bit of Melodic and Dancing. London, Hamish Metropolis, 1973.

Lanterns Across the Snow (novella). London, Joseph, 1987; NewYork, About, 1988.

Uncollected Short Stories

"Kielty's," in Winter's Tales 20, edited by A.D. Maclean. London, Macmillan, 1974; Pristine York, St. Martin's Press, 1975.

Plays

Lizard in the Grass (broadcast 1971; produced Edinburgh, 1988).Included in The Cold Country and Other Plays for Radio, 1975.

The Cold Homeland and Other Plays for Radio (includes The End of Summertime, Lizard in the Grass, Worry the Lilies, Strip Jack Naked ). London, BBC Publications, 1975.

On the Face of It (broadcast 1975). Published in Act 1, edited byDavid Self and Stack Speakman, London, Hutchinson, 1979.

The Crumbling Company (for children; produced Writer, 1981).

Chances (broadcast 1981; produced Writer, 1983).

Radio Plays:

Taking Leave, 1971; The End of Summer, 1971; Lizard in the Grass, 1971; The Cold Country, 1972; Winter Elegy, 1973; Consider the Lilies, 1973; A Window on the World, 1974; Strip Jack Naked, 1974; Mr. Proudham and Mr. Sleight, 1974; On the Face run through It, 1975; The Summer warning sign the Giant Sunflower, 1977; The Sound That Time Makes, 1980; Here Comes the Bride, 1980; Chances, 1981; Out in righteousness Cold, 1982; Autumn, 1985; Winter, 1985; I am the Awkward of the Castle, Susan Hill, London, Longman, 1990.

Television Plays:

Last Summer's Child, from her story "The BadnessWithin Him," 1981.

Other (for children)

One Night at a Time. Writer, Hamish Hamilton, 1984; as Go Away, Bad Dreams!, New Royalty, Random House, 1985.

Mother's Magic. Author, Hamish Hamilton, 1986.

Suzy's Shoes. Writer, Hamish Hamilton, 1989.

I Won't Reject There Again. London, Walker Books, 1990.

Septimus Honeydew. London, Walker Books, 1990.

Stories from Codling Village. Author, Walker Books, 1990.

The Collaborative Classroom. with Tim Hill. Portsmouth, NewHampshire, Heinemann, 1990.

Beware, Beware, with illustrations by Angela Barrett. Cambridge, Colony, Candlewick Press, and London, Traveller, 1993.

The Christmas Collection, with illustrations by John Lawrence. Cambridge, Colony, Candlewick Press, and London, Traveller, 1994.

The Glass Angels. London, Traveller, 1991. Cambridge, Massachusetts, Candlewick, 1992.

White Christmas. London, Walker, and City, Massachusetts, Candlewick, 1994.

King of Kings. Cambridge, Massachusetts, Candlewick, 1993;London, Pedestrian Books, 1994.

Can It Be True? A Christmas Story. London, Hamish Hamilton, and New York, Scandinavian Kestrel, 1988.

A Very Special Birthday. London, Walker, 1992.

Other

The Magic Apple Tree: A Country Year. Writer, Hamish Hamilton, 1982; New Dynasty, Holt Rinehart, 1983.

Through the Cookhouse Window. London, Hamish Hamilton, 1984.

Through the Garden Gate. London, Hamish Hamilton, 1986.

Shakespeare Country, photographs get by without Rob Talbot. London, Joseph, 1987.

The Lighting of the Lamps. Writer, Hamish Hamilton, 1987.

The Spirit hark back to the Cotswolds, photographs by Incision Meers. London, Joseph, 1988.

Family. Author, Joseph, 1989; New York, Scandinavian, 1990.

Crown Devon: The History sharing S. Fielding and Co. Stratford UponAvon, Jazz, 1993.

Diana: The Mysterious Years, with Simone Simmons. Newfound York, BallantineBooks, 1998.

Editor, The Flustered Preacher and Other Tales, near Thomas Hardy. London, Penguin, 1979.

Editor, with Isabel Quigly, New Fairy-tale 5. London, Hutchinson, 1980.

Editor, People: Essays and Poems. London, Chatto and Windus, 1983.

Editor, Ghost Stories. London, Hamish Hamilton, 1983.

Editor, The Parchment Moon: An Anthology signal your intention Modern Women's Short Stories. Author, Joseph, 1990; as The Penguin Book of Modern Women's Accordingly Stories, 1991.

Editor, The Walker Hardcover of Ghost Stories. London, Traveler Books, 1990; as The Chance House Book of Ghost Stores, New York, Random House, 1991.

Editor, Contemporary Women's Short Stories. Author, Joseph, 1995.

Manuscript Collections:

Eton College Boning up, Windsor, Berkshire.

Critical Studies:

Susan Hill: I'm the King of the Castle by Hana Sambrook, London, Longman, 1992.

One striking act of Susan Hill's novels quite good the wide-ranging diversity of dignity experience they depict; and in the opposite direction, a maturity of understanding new in a writer who began publishing her work at honourableness age of only 19.

From representation first she has shown well-ordered painful awareness of the unlit abysses of the spirit—fear, bummer, loneliness, and loss. A undying early theme is that sum lives warped and ruined get ahead of the selfishness of maternal supremacy. In A Change for authority Better Deirdre Fount struggles neat vain to break the chains of dependence forged by set aside overbearing mother. The boy Dancer in the short story "The Albatross" is the impotent sacrifice of a similar situation, determined by the mother-created image work his own inadequacy. Driven in the long run over the brink of discouragement, he does achieve his needed freedom, however brief, through marvellous climactic act of violence.

Hill has always been especially perceptive bring to fruition her portrayal of children. Song of her most memorable novels, I'm the King of decency Castle, is a penetrating read of mounting tensions in unadulterated bitter conflict between two eleven-year-old boys. This arises when expert widower engages a new domestic, who brings with her shipshape and bristol fashion son the same age gorilla his own. The peevish nambypamby already in possession is mad at this invasion of cherished territory, and in spruce up subtle campaign of persecution, onerous hounds the hapless intruder eminence an inevitably tragic denouement.

Hill's thickskinned insight into the behavior take precedence motivations of the young task matched by equal acuteness remit delineating the problems and attitudes of those at the contrary end of the human Gentleman and Ladies, a newfangled simultaneously funny and sad, observes with a shrewdly amused much compassionate eye the daily continuance and personalities of the inmates of an old people's bring in. The same intuitive sympathy informs the short story called "Missy." Through a dying woman's incomplete memories—frustratingly interrupted by the supply of brisk nurse and solitary visitor—the author intimately identifies adhere to the thought-processes of extreme age.

Hill's gift of imaginative projection impact worlds of experience far unconcerned from her own is nowhere more apparent than in Strange Meeting. Probably her most unbreakable tour de force, this problem set in the trenches give a rough idea Flanders during the 1914-18 battle, and depicts with power, cope with at times almost intolerable poignance, the doomed friendship of young officers drawn together unused their mutual daily contact expanse destruction and imminent death. Relating to is also an irresistible inclination between opposite temperaments and next of kin backgrounds: the reserved, introspective Hilliard finding inhibition magically thawed insert the warmth of his buddy Barton's easy, outgoing generosity.

The bulge of actuality in this newfangled, both in its factual carefulness and the immediacy of concern in the responses of combatants, is an astonishing achievement come up with a young woman. Strange Meeting also exemplifies Hill's capacity—comparatively unusual among women novelists either help out or present—for the convincing illustration of life from a man's viewpoint. The Bird of Night is another highly original story of great intensity which surveys a close relationship between team a few men. The central character obey a poet, Francis Croft, whose tormented struggle against intermittent however increasing insanity is chronicled by means of the withdrawn scholar Lawson, whose life becomes devoted to disquiet of his friend. The first-person masculine narrative of The Lady in Black, published after dinky silence of some years enclosure her career as a man of letters, provides a further instance aristocratic this aspect of Hill's endowment. An atmospherically charged ghost report, it is related in topping formal, rather stately past argot, although carefully unlocated in popular particular time. Full of Jamesian echoes and undercurrents, it odds with chilling compulsiveness the advancement of a mysterious and inauspicious haunting.

Her adventurous charting of specified varied areas of experience—childhood captivated old age, loyalties between other ranks, the horrors of war pole of insanity—demonstrates this versatile writer's ability to participate truthfully dash many states of mind build up conditions of life. But that does not preclude her ill-treatment of the more conventionally "feminine" subject. Perhaps more than lower-class of her books, In authority Springtime of the Year has a direct appeal for out readership of women. Its lady is a young widow heartlessly bereaved after a short topmost happy marriage; and it movingly explores the successive stages raise her grief, from initial irk refusal to accept the reality of loss through a faint coming to terms and amendment to her changed situation. Dignity surrounding countryside, evoked with rhythmical precision, plays a key job in Ruth's final renewal come close to hope. This echoes the author's own belief in the sanative influence of rural rhythms perch simplicities, reflected in her volumes of essays, such as The Magic Apple Tree, Through interpretation Kitchen Window, and Through distinction Garden Gate.

Mrs. De Winter constitutes a sequel to Daphne shelter Maurier's 1938 classic Rebecca, on the contrary adds little to the modern. With The Service of Clouds, Hill offers a tale summarize a woman's journey from childhood, through triumphs and misfortunes concern the time when she allegedly sees her hopes fulfilled withdraw her son. But the appear of Florence Hennessey is concluded in the manner of monumental archetype, with few specific trifles, as though Hill intended run on make it an Ur-version flawless a distinctly female Bildungsroman. Authority results are uneven; still, hoot with her effort to sequelize Daphne du Maurier, one lauds Hill for the courage help her attempt.

—Margaret Willy