Emma Tennant
| Emma Tennant | |
|---|---|
| Born |
Emma Christina Tennant 20 October 1937 London, England |
| Died | 20 January 2017 |
| Nationality | British |
| Education | St Paul's Girls' School |
| Occupation | novelist and editor |
| Spouse(s) |
Christopher Booker (1963-1968) Alexander Cockburn (1968-1973) Tim Owens (2008-) |
| Children | 3, including Matthew Yorke |
| Parent(s) | Christopher Tennant, 2nd Baron Glenconner Elizabeth Lady Glenconner (née Powell) |
| Relatives |
Edward Wyndham Tennant (uncle) Stephen Tennant (uncle) Colin Tennant, 3rd Baron Glenconner (nephew) |
Hon. Emma Christina Tennant FRSL (20 October 1937 – 20 January 2017) was a British novelist and editor. She was known for a postmodern approach to her fiction, which is often imbued with fantasy or magic. Several of her novels give a feminist or dreamlike twist to classic stories such as Two Women of London: The Strange Case of Ms Jekyll and Mrs Hyde (from Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde). She also published work under the name Catherine Aydy.
Tennant was of Scottish extraction, the daughter of Christopher Grey Tennant, 2nd Baron Glenconner, and Elizabeth Lady Glenconner (née Powell). She was the niece of Edward Wyndham Tennant and Stephen Tennant, and the half-sister of Colin Tennant, 3rd Baron Glenconner.
Born in London, she was educated at St Paul's Girls' School and spent the World War II years and her childhood summers at the family's faux Gothic mansion The Glen in Peeblesshire. Her family also owned estates in Trinidad. Tennant remembers her father as a mix of rage and benevolence, and these memories may have influenced her fiction.
Tennant grew up in the modish London of the 1950s and 1960s. She worked as a travel writer for Queen magazine and an editor for Vogue, publishing her first novel, The Colour of Rain, under a pseudonym when she was twenty-six. Between 1975 and 1979, she edited a literary magazine, Bananas, which helped launch the careers of several young novelists.
A large number of books by Tennant followed: thrillers, children’s books, fantasies, and several revisionist takes on classic novels, including a sequel to Pride and Prejudice called Pemberley. In later years, she began to treat her own life in such books as Girlitude and Burnt Diaries (both published in 1999), the second of which details her affair with Ted Hughes. The French Dancer's Bastard, which recounts the life of Adele, the daughter of Mr Rochester from Jane Eyre, was published in October 2006. The Autobiography of the Queen, written with Hilary Bailey, was published in October 2007.
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