AS Byatt says women who write intellectual books seen as unnatural

Grande dame of literature AS Byatt criticises Orange prize for fiction saying there is no such thing as feminine subject matte
Charlotte Higgins and Caroline Davies , guardian.co.uk, Friday 20 August 2010

AS Byatt said that women who write intellectually demanding novels are seen as strange. Photograph: Eamonn McCabe

Women who write smart, demanding novels are perceived by critics as strange and unnatural, "like a dog standing on its hind legs", the novelist AS Byatt tonight told the Edinburgh international book festival.

Byatt, who won the Booker prize in 1990 and was shortlisted for last year's award, said it was very hard for women to be accepted if they wrote intellectually challenging fiction. "If you are trying to think, there are always reviewers who take the attitude that it's like a dog standing on its hind legs, as Samuel Johnson put it: it would be better if you didn't do it."

The British novelist has been vocal in her criticism of sexism in the literary world, and also hit out at the Orange prize, which is limited to only women novelists. "The Orange prize is a sexist prize," she said. "You couldn't found a prize for male writers. The Orange prize assumes there is a feminine subject matter – which I don't believe in. It's honourable to believe that – there are fine critics and writers who do – but I don't."

AS Byatt has won one of the James Tait Black Memorial Prizes for The Children's Book. Photograph: Ian West/PA

Byatt was tonight awarded the James Tait Black Memorial prize, Britain's oldest literary award, for her latest novel, The Children's Book, pipping Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall to the post. Previous writers to receive the award include DH Lawrence, Evelyn Waugh and Graham Greene.

Other writers disagreed with Byatt on women's writing, with the Costa prize-winning author AL Kennedy calling her views "possibly slightly dated".

"I certainly, I would imagine, fall into the intellectually challenging box, and I don't think it has been particularly difficult because I am female. I don't think it is an easy thing to write and expect to be commercial, even if you are from Venus and a hermaphrodite.
Full story at The Guardian online.- including the views of Ian Rankin's and John Carey.