Emma Tennant

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Emma Christina Tennant (born October 20, 1937 in London ; died January 21, 2017 there ) was a British writer in whose work fantasy and science fiction play an essential role. Another focus is on sequels to classic English novels, including several novels by Jane Austen .

Life

Tennant's family belonged to the Scottish aristocracy. Her father was Christopher Gray Tennant, 2nd Baron Glenconner , her mother Elizabeth Lady Glenconner, née Powell. She was the younger sister of businessman Colin Tennant . When she was two years old the family moved to The Glen , a stately home on the Scottish border, where Tennant grew up until the family returned to London when Tennant was 9 years old. She attended St Paul's Girls' School in London , a prestigious private school, which she left when she was 15. Studies in Oxford and Paris followed.

In 1956 she made her debut at the British court and a year later married Sebastian Yorke, the son of the novelist Henry Vincent Yorke . The marriage was divorced, as were other marriages to Christopher Booker, founder of the satirical magazine Private Eye , and the journalist Alexander Cockburn . She had a son from her marriage to Yorke, the writer Matthew York (born 1958), from her marriage to Cockburn a daughter and from the connection with the publisher Michael Dempsey another daughter.

Tennant began working as a journalist in the 1960s, first as a correspondent for the women's magazine Queen in 1963 and then as an editor for Vogue in 1966 . From 1975 to 1978 she was editor of the literary magazine Bananas . The magazine's authors included Angela Carter , Elaine Feinstein and Sara Maitland as well as Ted Hughes , with whom Tennant had a relationship. This relationship and the history of Bananas magazine until it was closed in 1979 forms the background of Tennant's autobiographical book Burnt Diaries . In addition, the poet Sylvia Plath , Ted Hughes and Hughes' lover Assia Wevill form the tragic triangle told by Tennant's novel The Ballad of Sylvia and Ted (2001). After the end of Bananas , Tennant worked as editor of In Verse from 1982 and was editor of the Lives of Modern Women series at Viking Press from 1985 . In 1982 she became a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature . In 1996 the University of Aberdeen honored her with an honorary doctorate.

In 1964, Tennant had her debut novel The Color of Rain under the pseudonym Catherine Aydy , in which she targeted the artificiality and superficiality of life in the English upper class. Her second novel did not follow until almost a decade later with The Time of the Crack (1973). In 1972 Tennant had met some representatives of the New Wave of science fiction, including Michael Moorcock , John Sladek and above all JG Ballard . These inspired Tennant to incorporate elements of science fiction into their writing, and The Time of the Crack was the first example of this new direction in Tennant's work. In The Crack , a fault opens in the middle of London. The resulting crack swallows the Thames and opens up an abyss with an allegorical function. The result is a comical apocalypse in which the ruling groups (capitalists, psychiatrists, etc.) struggle to overcome the abyss. Ballard, Moorcock and Sladek later became the authors of Bananas .

Further "science fiction" novels by Tennants - which can be regarded as examples of slipstream literature, insofar as elements of science fiction (here the apocalyptic SF novel in the style of Ballard) are taken from the context of realistic mainstream, without to adopt the conventions of the SF-Geres - are the two following novels The Last of the Country House Murders (1974) and Hotel de Dream (1976). They show England in the near future, shaken by crises drawn with a satirical brush.

With Bad Sister (1978) Tennant left the slipstream and turned to the psychological novel enriched with elements of the mythical and supernatural, Bad Sister being the first novel in which she takes up and transforms a work by another author - here James Hoggs Confessions of a Justified Sinner , a book that she read as a child in Scotland and that made a big impression on her at the time - at Tennant the protagonist becomes a woman. Other novels from this group are Wild Nights (1979) and Woman Beware Woman (1983).

In addition to Bad Sister, Tennant's transformations and sequels of classic stories and novels include :

A recognized specialist in sequels and literary revivals, Tennant was also to write another sequel to Margaret Mitchell's Gone with the Wind , but the first version of this sequel was vehemently rejected by the publisher and the project failed, to Tennant's great regret.

Another group of works are those in which Tennant satirically engages with British society and in particular the manners and customs of the upper class. In addition to her debut The Color of Rain , this group includes The Adventures of Robina (1986), The House of Hospitalities (1987, German as a girl in a mansion ) and A Wedding of Cousins (1988, German as Marriage Fever ).

Tennant married Tim Owens in 2008, her partner for 33 years at the time - not only because of the inheritance tax for the common house, as she admitted at the time. Tennant died in 2017 at the age of 79 from posterior cortical atrophy , a form of Alzheimer's disease . Her estate is in the National Library of Scotland .

bibliography

Novels
  • The Color of Rain (1964, as Catherine Aydy)
  • The Time of the Crack (1973, also as The Crack , 1978)
  • The Last of the Country House Murders (1974)
  • Hotel de Dream (1976)
  • The Bad Sister (1978)
  • Wild Nights (1979)
  • Alice Fell (1980)
  • Queen of Stones (1982)
  • Woman Beware Woman (1983, also as The Half-Mother , 1985)
  • Black Marina (1985)
  • The Adventures of Robina, by Herself: Being the Memoirs of a Debutante at the Court of Queen Elizabeth II (1986)
  • The House of Hospitalities (1987)
    • German: Girls in the Manor. Translated by Astrid Arz. Schneekluth, Munich 1990, ISBN 3-7951-1083-1 .
  • A Wedding of Cousins (1988)
    • German: marriage fever. Translated by Astrid Arz. Schneekluth, Munich 1995, ISBN 3-7951-1156-0 .
  • The Magic Drum (1989)
  • Two Women of London: The Strange Case of Ms. Jekyll and Mrs. Hyde (1989)
  • Sisters and Strangers (1990)
  • Faustine (1991)
  • Pemberley; or, Pride and Prejudice Continued (1993, also as Pemberley: A Sequel to Pride and Prejudice )
    • German: Pemberley. Translated by Susanne Lüdcke. Heyne, Munich 1996, ISBN 3-453-10826-4 .
  • Tess (1993)
  • To Unequal Marriage; or, Pride and Prejudice Twenty Years Later (1994)
    • English: The heirs of Pemberley. Translated by Susanne Lüdcke. Heyne, Munich 1997, ISBN 3-453-11662-3 .
  • Travesties (1995)
  • Emma in Love: Jane Austen's Emma Continued (1996)
  • Elinor and Marianne: A Sequel to Sense and Sensibility (1996)
  • The Ballad of Sylvia and Ted (2001)
  • A House in Corfu: A Family's Sojourn in Greece (2001)
  • Felony: The Private History of the Aspern Papers (2002)
  • Adele: Jane Eyre's Hidden Story (2003, also as The French Dancer's Bastard , and as Thornfield Hall: Jane Eyre's Hidden Story , 2007)
  • Corfu Banquet: a Seasonal Memoir with Recipes (2004)
  • Heathcliff's Tale (2005)
  • The Harp Lesson (2005)
  • The Autobiography of the Queen (2007)
    • English: The Queen's Autobiography. Translated by Sabine von Sternstein. DTV, Munich 2008, ISBN 978-3-423-21105-5 .
  • Confessions of a Sugar Mummy (2007)
  • The Beautiful Child: A Ghost Story Based on a Tale by Henry James (2012)
  • Hitler's Girls (2013)
Short stories
  • Mrs. Ragley (1973)
  • Mrs. Barratt's Ghost (1973)
  • Philomela (1977)
  • The Bed That Mick Built (1977)
  • Cupboard Love (1979)
  • Tortoise-Shell Endpapers (1979)
  • The Frog Prints (1983)
  • The German in the Wood (1984)
Children's books
  • The Boggart (1980)
  • The Search for Treasure Island (1981)
  • The Ghost Child (1984)
  • Dare's Secret Pony (1991)
  • Princess Cinderella and Her Wicked Sisters (1996, with Alex De Wolf)
Non-fiction
  • The ABC of Writing (1992)
  • Hooked Rugs (1995, with Ann Davies)
  • Girlitude: A Memoir of the 50s and 60s (1999)
script

Frankenstein's Baby , 1990.

Autobiography
  • Strangers: A Family Romance (1999)
  • Burnt Diaries (1999)
  • Girlitude: A Memoir of the 50s and 60s (1999)
  • Waiting for Princess Margaret (2009)
editor
  • Bananas (1977)
  • Saturday Night Reader (1979)

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Emma Tennant: Tying the knot after 33 years. Article in The Guardian on April 20, 2008, accessed September 29, 2018.
personal data
SURNAME Tennant, Emma
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Tennant, Emma Christina (full name); Aydy, Catherine (pseudonym)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British writer
DATE OF BIRTH October 20, 1937
PLACE OF BIRTH London
DATE OF DEATH January 21, 2017
Place of death London