Still Life (Byatt novel)

Still Life
Author	A. S. Byatt
Language	English
Publisher	Chatto & Windus
Publication date	1985

Still Life is a 1985 novel by A. S. Byatt. The novel was published by Chatto & Windus in 1985.

The novel is the second in a sequence of four books, preceded by The Virgin in the Garden (1978) and succeeded by Babel Tower (1996) and A Whistling Woman (2002).^[1]^[2]^[3]

In the interval between publication of Still Life and Babel Tower, Byatt published Possession: A Romance, her best-selling novel, which won the 1990 Booker Prize.^[4]

^ Yeazell, Ruth Bernard (28 November 2002). "Overindulgence". London Review of Books. 24 (23). ISSN 0260-9592. Retrieved 1 November 2022.
^ Brace, Marianne (9 June 1996). "That thinking feeling". The Observer.
^ "Dame A. S. Byatt". British Council: Literature. Retrieved 25 October 2022.
^ Newman, Jenny; Friel, James (2003). "An interview with A. S. Byatt". Cercles. Retrieved 11 September 2010. JN & JF: When Possession was published in 1990 you were in the middle of a quartet. The Virgin in the Garden had appeared in 1978, and Still Life in 1985, but with Babel Tower (1996) and A Whistling Woman (2002) still to come, the quartet was taking you some time to complete. ASB: Most of the gap was caused by the death of my son. I went to teach at University College simply to pay his school fees, and he got killed the week I accepted the job. I wouldn't have otherwise become a teacher, I wanted to become a writer. Added to which I was pregnant, so the slowness of the novels, given a full-time university job, a new baby and a dead child can be put as a flat, autobiographical narrative... There were two things going on in my mind: one was that I knew that Babel Tower, the third in the quartet, ought to be a parodic novel in several voices, and I thought that I wasn't technically skilled enough.

[1] Yeazell, Ruth Bernard (28 November 2002). "Overindulgence". London Review of Books. 24 (23). ISSN 0260-9592. Retrieved 1 November 2022.

[2] Brace, Marianne (9 June 1996). "That thinking feeling". The Observer.

[3] "Dame A. S. Byatt". British Council: Literature. Retrieved 25 October 2022.

[4] Newman, Jenny; Friel, James (2003). "An interview with A. S. Byatt". Cercles. Retrieved 11 September 2010. JN & JF: When Possession was published in 1990 you were in the middle of a quartet. The Virgin in the Garden had appeared in 1978, and Still Life in 1985, but with Babel Tower (1996) and A Whistling Woman (2002) still to come, the quartet was taking you some time to complete. ASB: Most of the gap was caused by the death of my son. I went to teach at University College simply to pay his school fees, and he got killed the week I accepted the job. I wouldn't have otherwise become a teacher, I wanted to become a writer. Added to which I was pregnant, so the slowness of the novels, given a full-time university job, a new baby and a dead child can be put as a flat, autobiographical narrative... There were two things going on in my mind: one was that I knew that Babel Tower, the third in the quartet, ought to be a parodic novel in several voices, and I thought that I wasn't technically skilled enough.

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