The Brooknerian

Further to my post of last week :

Like buses, the Brookner mentions come thick and fast. In the 'NB' column of this week's TLS , her book reviewing is wryly celebrated: 'An occasional pleasure in the literary pages: the long book review that shows barely any interest in the book under review'. We learn of a 1976 review Brookner wrote of a biography of George Sand. The review's 3,000 words comprised, the biographer complained, only seven about the book: a contravention, she felt, of 'a literary Trades Description Act'.

 Part of Everyman's Library Contemporary Classics Series, to be published later in the year:

I haven't yet been able to find the covers, but these are apparently the fresh spines of some Brookner novels to be republished in June: An intriguing selection, focusing on the 1980s ( A Start in Life , Look at Me* , Latecomers ) and the 2000s ( The Bay of Angels , The Next Big Thing ). I am pleased to see The Next Big Thing , a late masterpiece and as raw and edgy as anything she ever wrote. I should perhaps reconsider The Bay of Angels . But what of the great, settled, magisterial novels of the 90s - A Family Romance, A Private View, Visitors ? *Disappointing to see the continuing capitalisation of the preposition, inaugurated in the cover refresh of ten years ago.

On the tenth anniversary of Anita Brookner's death, Hermione Lee gives an insightful portrait of the author (see here ). Professor Lee's forthcoming biography was an exercise in life-writing not without its difficulties: Brookner was an intensely private person who made away with most of her archive, kept her friends in separate compartments, and had secrets she never revealed.

The photograph, taken by Peter Campbell in 1982, featured on a cover of the London Review of Books in 1982. See an earlier Brooknerian post here . Peter Campbell's son tells the story of the photo's rediscovery here . The image, not previously in wide circulation online, shows Brookner in her mid-fifties in the early days of her second life as a novelist. She has published A Start in Life and Providence . Her hand-to-head pose, a go-to for portrait photographers, will become a signature. For Brookner it likely refers to Ingres's painting of Mme Moitessier in the National Gallery ( here ). Hermione Lee's biography of Anita Brookner will be published in September.

Another delightful vouchsafement: on YouTube, the full 1984 Booker ceremony: