A peerless chronicler of class and romance, the “Pride and Prejudice” author was never prolific. But her work remains remarkably relevant, more than two centuries after her death.
An organizer and author, she believed that a union was only as strong as its members and trained thousands “to take over their unions and change them.”
“The Queen of the Tambourine,” “Old Filth” and other fiction vividly captured both working-class and aristocratic Britain in the last years of the colonial era.
The British author, best known for her “Old Filth” trilogy, never paid much attention to literary fashion, and her 22 novels range widely in genre, tone and style.
In 44 years at Knopf, she shepherded history books that won a raft of Pulitzers — seven in all — as well as Bancrofts, although one recipient set off a furious debate.
With books like “The Mother Knot” and “Beyond the Whiteness of Whiteness,” she challenged liberal orthodoxies about feminism and the Black experience in America.
With books like “The Mother Knot” and “Beyond the Whiteness of Whiteness,” she challenged liberal orthodoxies about feminism and the Black experience in America.