Marina Warner

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Marina Warner bigraphy, stories - Writer and mythographer

Marina Warner : biography

11 September 1946 –

Marina Sarah Warner, CBE, FBA (born 9 November 1946 in London, England) 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 is currently Professor in the Department of Literature, Film and Theatre Studies at the University of Essex.

Honours and awards

  • 1984 Elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature
  • 1986 Fawcett Society Book Prize for Monuments and Maidens: The Allegory of the Female Form
  • 1988 Booker Prize for Fiction (shortlist) for The Lost Father
  • 1989 Commonwealth Writers Prize (Eurasia Region, Best Book) for The Lost Father
  • 1989 PEN/Macmillan Silver Pen Award for The Lost Father
  • 1996 Mythopoeic Award for From the Beast to the Blonde: On Fairy Tales and Their Tellers
  • 1999 Katharine Briggs Folklore Award for No Go the Bogeyman: Scaring, Lulling and Making Mock
  • 2000 Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres (France)
  • 2000 Rose Mary Crawshay Prize for English Literature for No Go the Bogeyman: Scaring, Lulling and Making Mock
  • 2005 Elected Fellow of the British Academy
  • 2008 CBE
  • 2012 National Book Critics Circle Award (Criticism) for Stranger Magic: Charmed States and the Arabian Nights
  • 2013 Truman Capote Award for Literary Criticism for Stranger Magic: Charmed States and the Arabian Nights
  • 2013 Sheikh Zayed Book Award for Arab Culture in Non-Arabic Languages for Stranger Magic: Charmed States and the Arabian Nights
  • 2013 All Souls College Oxford Two-Year Fellowship

Footnotes

Early life

She 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. In 1971, she married William Shawcross, with whom she had a son Conrad Shawcross; the couple later divorced.

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 adoration of the Virgin Mary. These were followed by Monuments & Maidens: The Allegory of the Female Form and Joan of Arc: The Image of Female Heroism.

Her novel The Lost Father was on the Booker Prize shortlist in 1988; the non-fiction 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 and Indigo. 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. A collection of her writings about art is scheduled to be published under the title The Symbol Gives Rise to Thought, by Violette Editions.

She was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 1984. She gave the 1994 Reith Lectures on Managing Monsters and was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 2008 Birthday Honours for services to literature. Received an honorary doctorate (DLitt) from the University of Oxford on 21 June 2006

She also has honorary degrees from the Universities of Exeter, York and St Andrews, and honorary doctorates from Sheffield Hallam University and the University of North London. She is currently Professor in the Department of Literature, Film and Theatre Studies at the University of Essex.