Chronology

1936 – Antonia Susan Byatt (born Drabble) was born in Sheffield. She was the eldest child of
Kathleen Bloor, a scholar of Robert Browning and John Drabble, QC. She has two sisters, the art
historian Helen Langdon and the novelist Margaret Drabble, and a brother, Richard Drabble, QC
and barrister. The presence of autobiographical elements, in both A.S. Byatt’s and Margaret
Drabble’s writing, has made the relationship between the two sisters a bit complicated. She
studied at two boarding schools: Sheffield High School and the Quaker Mount School. She went
to Newnham College, in Cambridge, Bryn Mawr College in the United States, and Somerville
College, in Oxford.

1959 – She married Ian Charles Rayner Byatt. They had a daughter and a son who died in a car
accident.

1964 – She published The Shadow of the Sun, her first novel.

1967 – She published The Game, in which she continued the theme of complex family
relationship started in her first novel.

1962-1971 – She lectured in the Department of Extra-Mural Studies at the University of London
and at the Central School of Art and Design.

1969 – She got a divorce from Ian Charles Rayner Byatt and married Peter John Duffy, with
whom she has two daughters.

1972-1983 – She lectured at University College London.

1972 – She became a full-time Lecturer in English and American Literature at University
College London.

1974-1977 – She was a member of the Social Effects of Television Advisory Group BBC.

1977-1982 – She was an Associate of Newnham College.

1978-1984 – She was a member of the Board of Communications and Cultural Studies, CNAA.

1978 – She published The Virgin in the Garden, which is the first novel in a quartet that relates
the stories of the members of a Yorkshire family.

All the information presented in this chronology has been taken from A.S. Byatt’s website:
http://www.asbyatt.com/biography.aspx and from the British Council’s article “Dame A. S.
Byatt”: https://literature.britishcouncil.org/writer/a-s-byatt.
1981 – She became a Senior Lecturer at UCL

1983 – She left from UCL in order to concentrate on writing full-time.

1984-1988 – She was a member of the Management Committee at Society of Authors.

1985-1987 – She was a member of the Board of Creative and Performing Arts, CNAA.

1985 – She published Still Life, the secondn novel in the quartet, ehich won PEN/Macmillan
Silver Pen Award.

1986-1988 – She was a Chairman of the Society of Authors.

1987-1988 – She was a member of the Kingman Committee of Inquiry into the teaching of
English Language.

1990 – She published Possession: A Romanc, her most famous novel.

1990 – She won the Booker Prize for Fiction, for her novel Possession: A Romance.

1990-1998 – She was a member of the Literature Advisory Panel for the British Council.

1992 – She published Angels and Insects, which consists of two novellas, The Conjugal Angel
and Morpho Eugenia.

1993-1998 – She was a member of the Board at British Council.

1995 – Her novella Morpho Eugenia was turned into the film called Angels & Insects.

1997 – She published Babel Tower, the third novel in the quartet.

2000 – She published The Biographer's Tale, which tells the story of a postgraduate student, who
decides to write a biography about a biographer.

2002 – She published A Whistling Woman, the fourth and final novel in the quartet.

2009 – She published The Children's Book, which won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize.

2011 – She published Ragnarok: The End of the Gods, the story of a young girl that receives a
book of ancient Norse legends and the changes the book brings in her life.

2014 – She was a Foreign Honorary Member at the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

All the information presented in this chronology has been taken from A.S. Byatt’s website:
http://www.asbyatt.com/biography.aspx and from the British Council’s article “Dame A. S.
Byatt”: https://literature.britishcouncil.org/writer/a-s-byatt.