It’s the birthday of English author and art historian Anita Brookner (1928-2016), first known as a brilliant art critic and later more widely known for her bleak but witty novels about unhappy middle-aged women, one of which, Hotel du Lac (1984), won the Booker Prize out from under the heavily favored Empire of the Sun (J.G. Ballard).

Brookner was born in Southeast London to Polish Jewish immigrants (originally named “Bruckner”) and grew up surrounded by relatives, whom she called a “transplanted and fragile people, an unhappy brood, and I felt that I had to protect them.” She felt as a result that she both grew up too fast and never fully grew up. Her father taught her to love Dickens, and later in life Brookner said she still read a Dickens novel every year.

Brookner studied French and history at King’s College London and often skipped a third subject in order to wander into lectures at the National Gallery. One of the lecturers suggested she study art history, so she did, eventually going for an M.A. at the Courtauld Institute of Art. One of her professors there was Anthony Blunt, a noted art historian later revealed to be a Soviet spy. (Raise your hand if you’re really a Soviet spy. Oh wait, you probably can’t.) Her thesis on the French artist Jean Baptiste Greuze did so well it was upgraded to a doctorate. (Score. How often does that happen? That happens never.) She went on to teach at Reading University and Courtauld and became the first woman to become a Slade Professor of Art at the University of Cambridge, a Very Big Deal in the world of art history.

Brookner wrote several important books of criticism—including The Genius of the Future: Studies in French Art History, 1971; Jacques-Louis David, 1980; and Romanticism and Its Discontents (2000)—but did not start writing fiction until she was over 50; she began in a moment of personal crisis as “an exercise in self-analysis.” She wrote several novels before winning the Booker with Hotel du Lac, which tells the story of the romantic misadventures of Edith Hope. After this, she wrote about one book a year for many years. According to author Tessa Hadley writing in The Guardian in 2016, Brookner’s best novels include A Start in Life (1981, and Brookner’s first), A Missalliance (1986), Latecomers (1988), Lewis Percy (1989), and Brief Lives (1990). But Hilary Mantel (featured in my July 6th post) wrote, “You can start with any one of [her novels]. The singular quality of each, as well as the integrity of the project, is established. Each book is a prayer bead on a string, and each prayer is a secular, circumspect prayer, a prayer and a protest and a charm against encroaching night” (“Poisoned by the Past,” The Guardian, Feb. 28, 2009). Good enough for me.

Brookner never married and died in London at 87.

Have a fine and dandy Monday and stay scrupulously honest to the data.