Author of Possession and The Children’s Book AS Byatt dies aged 87

Writer and critic won the Booker Prize in 1990 for her novel ‘Possession’

‘We mourn her loss but it’s a comfort to know that her penetrating works will dazzle, shine and refract in the minds of readers for generations to come,’ said the author’s publisher (Sygma via Getty)

The Booker Prize-winning author and critic AS Byatt has died, aged 87.

Her publisher announced the news on Friday (17 November), noting that she died peacefully at home, surrounded by family.

Also known as Dame Antonia Byatt, the author won the revered Booker Prize in 1990 for Possession, a novel about two academics falling in love while researching the relationship between fictional Victorian poets.

Possession was adapted for a 2002 romance mystery movie of the same name starring Gwyneth Paltrow, Aaron Eckhart, Toby Stephens and Tom Hollander.

Last year, her 1995 short story “The Djinn In The Nightingale’s Eye” inspired a fantasy drama starring Idris Elba and Tilda Swinton, Three Thousand Years Of Longing, which features a conversation between a genie and an academic in a hotel room in Istanbul.

Clara Farmer, her publisher at Chatto & Windus, an imprint of Penguin Random House, said in a statement: “Antonia’s books are the most wonderful jewel boxes of stories and ideas.

“Her compulsion to write (A4 blue notebook always to hand) and her ability to create intricate skeins of narrative was remarkable. It was always a treat to see her, to hear updates about her evolving literary characters and indulge in delicious titbits of literary gossip.

“Like all Chatto’s publishers before me, I was devoted to her and her writing.

“2024 would have been her 60th (Diamond) anniversary as a Chatto author,” the statement continued.

“We mourn her loss but it’s a comfort to know that her penetrating works will dazzle, shine and refract in the minds of readers for generations to come.”

AS Byatt was made Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE) in 1999 (PA Archive)

Born Antonia Drabble in Sheffield in 1936, Byatt read English at Cambridge, as well as further studies at Bryn Mawr College in Philadelphia, and Oxford.

In 1959, she married the economist Ian Byatt and moved to Durham. They had two children together, including a son, Charles, who died aged 11 after being hit by a drunk driver. The couple divorced in 1969.

Before she began writing full-time in 1983, Byatt had been a lecturer since the 1960s at various London institutions, including the Central School of Art and Design and University College London.

Her younger sister, Margaret Drabble, is also an author. They were often described as “feuding” due to their tumultuous relationship and their shared subjects of interest for their books – namely, complicated family dynamics.

Notable Byatt titles include The Shadow of the Sun and her tetralogy of works, The Quartet: The Virgin in the Garden (1978), Still Life (1985), Babel Tower (1996) and A Whistling Woman (2002).

She received a CBE in 1990, which was promoted to Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE) “for services to Literature” in Elizabeth II’s 1999 birthday honours list.

In 2009, Byatt was shortlisted for the Booker Prize again for The Children’s Book, a 19th-century-set novel about interrelated families and creativity amid a backdrop of war.

Her most recent publication, Medusa’s Ankles: Selected Stories, came out in 2021.

Dame Antonia lived in Putney, southwest London, with her husband, Peter Duffy, who survives her.