An Awfully Big Adventure

Beryl Bainbridge was born on November 21, 1934, in Liverpool, England. She became an actress at a young age and worked in English repertory theatres and on the radio. Her work contains dark, somber subject matter, deftly mixed with humor. Her writing acts as an outlet for her childhood frustrations, and frequently deals with family relations. In her novels, she recalls memories of disappointment and of a bad-tempered, brooding father. During her lifetime, she wrote 18 novels including A Weekend with Claude, Another Part of the Wood, The Bottle Factory Outing, The Birthday Boys, According to Queeney, and Young Adolf. She adapted many of her novels, such as An Awfully Big Adventure, Sweet William, and The Dressmaker, for film. She has received numerous awards and honors including the Whitbread Award in 1977 for Injury Time and in 1996 for Every Man for Himself; the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction in 1998 for Master Georgie; a Guardian Fiction Award, and the David Cohen Prize for Literature in 2003. She was made a dame by Queen Elizabeth II in 2000. She died from cancer on July 2, 2010 at the age of 77.