Emma Tennant

Gina Wisker (University of Brighton)
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Born in 1937, Scottish originated novelist Emma Tennant mixes post-modernism, fantasy and magic realism. Her work is feminist, magical and wicked, and uses the fantastic and the Gothic to interpret and explore everyday women's roles. Her family is of upper middle class Scottish extraction and owns “Glen”, a fake Gothic baronial mansion in Pembrokeshire, as well as estates in Trinidad gained during the nineteenth century. She remembers her father Charles Tennant as alternating between “frightful rages and paternalistic benevolence” and, perhaps as a result of this, excessive family relationships and social, emotional and formal contradictions appear throughout her work.

Her first novel, The Colour of Rain, is a comedy of manners written largely in dialogue. It was published when she

648 words

Citation: Wisker, Gina. "Emma Tennant". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 07 July 2001 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=4345, accessed 19 March 2024.]

4345 Emma Tennant 1 Historical context notes are intended to give basic and preliminary information on a topic. In some cases they will be expanded into longer entries as the Literary Encyclopedia evolves.

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