Writer Elizabeth Jane Howard dies after career lasting more than 60 years
Cazalet Chronicles author's stepson Martin Amis called her 'the most interesting woman writer of her generation'
Writer Elizabeth Jane Howard in 2003 Photograph: Murdo Macleod
The award-winning novelist Elizabeth Jane Howard, who is said to have sparked a love of literature in her stepson Martin Amis, has died at her home in Bungay, Suffolk, after a short illness. She was 90.
Howard won the John Llewellyn Rhys prize in 1951 for her debut novel, The Beautiful Visit. But she is best known for her five-part family saga, The Cazalet Chronicles, which charts the lives of an upper-middle class English family during and after the second world war. The final book in the series was published in November 2013, and the stories have been dramatised on BBC Radio 4.
Her third marriage, to Sir Kingsley Amis, allowed her to influence Martin Amis, who called her "the most interesting woman writer of her generation".
A self-educated woman, she claimed to be a "sort of seething feminist" who listed Jane Austen as her favourite novelist. Her work, like Austen's, reveals the nuances of middle-class family relationships. It was a copy of Austen's Pride and Prejudice given to her teenage stepson, Martin, that triggered his interest in literature.
After the end of her first marriage, to Peter Scott (son of Scott of the Antarctic), she earned her living as a reviewer, editor and, for a while, a TV scriptwriter, with credits including an episode of Upstairs, Downstairs and film scripts.
Howard lived a colourful and sexually liberated life, with a string of open relationships and affairs, including one with Cecil Day-Lewis. She told the Guardian in April: "He ended up by being very angry with me because I left and he said: 'You shouldn't have done that. You're a whore,' and a lot of rather bitter poems came out."
Howard won the John Llewellyn Rhys prize in 1951 for her debut novel, The Beautiful Visit. But she is best known for her five-part family saga, The Cazalet Chronicles, which charts the lives of an upper-middle class English family during and after the second world war. The final book in the series was published in November 2013, and the stories have been dramatised on BBC Radio 4.
Her third marriage, to Sir Kingsley Amis, allowed her to influence Martin Amis, who called her "the most interesting woman writer of her generation".
A self-educated woman, she claimed to be a "sort of seething feminist" who listed Jane Austen as her favourite novelist. Her work, like Austen's, reveals the nuances of middle-class family relationships. It was a copy of Austen's Pride and Prejudice given to her teenage stepson, Martin, that triggered his interest in literature.
After the end of her first marriage, to Peter Scott (son of Scott of the Antarctic), she earned her living as a reviewer, editor and, for a while, a TV scriptwriter, with credits including an episode of Upstairs, Downstairs and film scripts.
Howard lived a colourful and sexually liberated life, with a string of open relationships and affairs, including one with Cecil Day-Lewis. She told the Guardian in April: "He ended up by being very angry with me because I left and he said: 'You shouldn't have done that. You're a whore,' and a lot of rather bitter poems came out."
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