Dame Penelope Lively was born in Egypt in 1933 and lived there for much of her childhood. She then read Modern History at Oxford: the fact that she was educated as a historian sets her apart from many contemporary novelists, and historical frameworks and questions about how history is written and understood shape much of her work, as does, sometimes, her colonial childhood.
Lively’s first published fiction was a children’s book, Astercote (1970), and this was followed by ten others which were highly acclaimed, including The Ghost of Thomas Kempe (1973), which won the Carnegie Medal, and Going Back (1975), later re-published as ‘adult’ fiction. The former novel, now established as a children’s classic, has a sixteenth-century sorcerer making a twentieth-century boy his apprentice;
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Citation: Turner, Nick. "Penelope Lively". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 05 March 2016 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=2758, accessed 23 April 2024.]
