Name Marina Warner Role Novelist | ||
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Born Marina Sarah Warner 9 November 1946 (age 77) London, England, UK ( 1946-11-09 ) Occupation Mythographer, novelist, lecturer, professor Awards Mythopoeic Scholarship Award in Myth and Fantasy Studies Books From the beast to the blonde, Alone of all her sex, No go the bogeyman, Phantasmagoria, Joan of Arc: The Image of Similar People William Shawcross, David Nash, Queen Victoria, Lynne Tillman, Mary | ||
Marina warner learning my lesson
Dame Marina Sarah Warner, (born 1946) is a British novelist, short story writer, historian and mythographer. She is known for her many non-fiction books relating to feminism and myth. She has written for many publications, including The London Review of Books, the New Statesman, Sunday Times, The Telegraph and Vogue. She has been a visiting professor, given lectures and taught on the faculties of many universities.
Contents
- Marina warner learning my lesson
- The tales things tell marina warner
- Early life
- Career
- Honours and awards
- References
She resigned from her position as Professor in the Department of Literature, Film and Theatre Studies at the University of Essex in 2014, sharply criticising moves towards "for-profit business model" universities in the UK, and is now Professor of English and Creative Writing at Birkbeck, University of London. In 2017 she was elected president of the Royal Society of Literature (RSL), the first time the role has been held by a woman since the founding of the RSL in 1820.
The tales things tell marina warner
Early life
Marina Warner was born in London to an English father and Italian mother. Her paternal grandfather was the English cricketer Sir Pelham Warner. She was brought up in Cairo, Brussels and in Berkshire, England, where she studied at St Mary's School, Ascot. She studied French and Italian at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford. While at Oxford she was the editor of Isis: a magazine for Oxford University (published by Robert Maxwell). In 1971, she married William Shawcross, with whom she had a son, Conrad. The couple divorced in 1980.
Career
Her first book was The Dragon Empress: The Life and Times of Tz'u-hsi, Empress Dowager of China, 1835–1908 (1972), followed by the controversial Alone of All Her Sex: The Myth and the Cult of the Virgin Mary (1976), a provocative study of Roman Catholic veneration of the Virgin Mary. These were followed by Joan of Arc: The Image of Female Heroism (1981) and Monuments & Maidens: The Allegory of the Female Form (1985).
Warner's novel The Lost Father was on the Booker Prize shortlist in 1988. Her non-fiction book From the Beast to the Blonde: On Fairy Tales and Their Tellers won a Mythopoeic Award in 1996. The companion study of the male terror figure (from ancient myth and folklore to modern obsessions), No Go the Bogeyman: On Scaring, Lulling, and Making Mock, was published in 2000 and won the British Academy's Rose Mary Crawshay Prize that year. Warner's other novels include The Leto Bundle (2001) and Indigo (1992). Her book Phantasmagoria (2006) traces the ways in which "the spirit" has been represented across different mediums, from waxworks to cinema. In December 2012, she presented a programme on BBC Radio Four about the Brothers Grimm. She was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 1984. In 1994 she became only the second woman to deliver the BBC's Reith Lectures, published as Managing Monsters: Six Myths of Our Time, in which she gave a analysis of the workings of myth in contemporary society, with emphasis on politics and entertainment.
She received an honorary doctorate (DLitt) from the University of Oxford on 21 June 2006, as well as holding honorary degrees from the universities of Exeter (1995), York (1997) and St Andrews (1998), and honorary doctorates from Sheffield Hallam University (1995), the University of North London (1997), the Tavistock Institute (University of East London; 1999), Oxford University (2002), the Royal College of Art (2004), University of Kent (2005), the University of Leicester (2006), and King's College London (2009).
She was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 2008 Queen's Birthday Honours for services to literature.
She was a professor in the Department of Literature, Film and Theatre Studies at the University of Essex from 2004 until her resignation in 2014. She took up a Chair in English and Creative Writing at Birkbeck College, University of London, in September 2014. She is currently a Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford, and was Chair of the judges of the Man Booker International Prize 2015.
She was made a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE) in the 2015 New Year Honours for services to higher education and literary scholarship.
In March 2017, Warner was elected as the Royal Society of Literature's 19th — and first female — president, succeeding Colin Thubron in the post.