Lively, Penelope 1933–

(Penelope Margaret Lively)

PERSONAL: Born March 17, 1933, in Cairo, Egypt; daughter of Roger Low (a bank manager) and Vera Greer; immigrated to England, 1945; married Jack Lively (a university teacher), June 27, 1957; children: Josephine, Adam. Education: St. Anne's College, Oxford, B.A. (with honors), 1956. Hobbies and other interests: Gardening, landscape history, talking, listening.

ADDRESSES: Agent—David Higham Associates, 5-8 Lower John St., Golden Square, London W1F 9HA, England.

CAREER: Writer.

MEMBER: Society of Authors, PEN, Royal Society of Literature (fellow).

AWARDS, HONORS: Children's Spring Book Festival Award, Book World, 1973, for The Driftway; Carnegie Medal, and Hans Christian Andersen Award list, both 1973, both for The Ghost of Thomas Kempe; Whitbread Award, 1976, for A Stitch in Time; Booker-McConnell Prize shortlist, 1977, for The Road to Lichfield, and 1984, for According to Mark; Southern Arts Literary Prize, 1978, for Nothing Missing but the Samovar and Other Stories; Arts Council of Great Britain National Book Award, 1979, for Treasures of Time; Whitbread Award shortlist and Booker-McConnell Prize, both 1987, both for Moon Tiger; honorary D.Litt., Tufts University, 1990, and Warwick University, 1998; honorary fellow, Swansea University, 2002; Order of the British Empire, 1989, for contributions to literature; Commander of the British Empire, 2002; The Ghost of Thomas Kempe, The House in Norham Gardens, A Stitch in Time, and Fanny's Sister were all Horn Book honor books; The House in Norham Gardens was an American Library Association Notable Book.

WRITINGS:

FOR CHILDREN

Astercote, illustrated by Antony Maitland, Heinemann (London, England), 1970, Dutton (New York, NY), 1971.

The Whispering Knights, illustrated by Gareth Floyd, Heinemann (London, England), 1971, Dutton (New York, NY), 1976.

The Wild Hunt of Hagworthy, illustrated by Juliet Moz-ley, Heinemann (London, England), 1971, illustrated by Robert Payne, Pan Books (New York, NY), 1975, published as The Wild Hunt of the Ghost Hounds, Dutton (New York, NY), 1972, illustrated by Jeremy Ford, Puffin Books (New York, NY), 1984.

The Driftway, Heinemann (London, England), 1972, Dutton (New York, NY), 1973.

The Ghost of Thomas Kempe, illustrated by Antony Maitland, Dutton (New York, NY), 1973.

The House in Norham Gardens, Dutton (New York, NY), 1974.

Boy without a Name, illustrated by Ann Dalton, Parnassus Press (Berkeley, CA), 1975.

Going Back, Dutton (New York, NY), 1975.

A Stitch in Time, Dutton (New York, NY), 1976.

The Stained Glass Window, illustrated by Michael Pollard, Abelard-Schumann (London, England), 1976.

Fanny's Sister, illustrated by John Lawrence, Heinemann (London, England), 1976, new edition, illustrated by Anita Lobel, Dutton (New York, NY), 1980.

The Presence of the Past: An Introduction to Landscape History, Collins (London, England), 1976.

The Voyage of QV66, illustrated by Harold Jones, Heinemann (London, England), 1978, Dutton (New York, NY), 1979.

Fanny and the Monsters, illustrated by John Lawrence, Heinemann (London, England), 1979, enlarged edition, 1983.

Fanny and the Battle of Potter's Piece, illustrated by John Lawrence, Heinemann (London, England), 1980.

The Revenge of Samuel Stokes, Dutton (New York, NY), 1981.

Fanny and the Monsters and Other Stories (contains Fanny's Sister, Fanny and the Monsters, and Fanny and the Battle of Potter's Piece), Puffin Books (New York, NY), 1982.

Uninvited Ghosts and Other Stories, illustrated by John Lawrence, Heinemann (London, England), 1984, Dutton (New York, NY), 1985.

Dragon Trouble, illustrated by Valerie Littlewood, Heinemann (London, England), 1984, Barron's (New York, NY), 1989.

A House Inside Out, illustrated by David Parkins, Deutsch (London, England), 1987, Dutton (New York, NY), 1988.

Debbie and the Little Devil, illustrated by Toni Goffe, Heinemann (London, England), 1987.

Judy and the Martian, Simon & Schuster (London, England), 1992.

The Cat, the Crow, and the Banyan Tree, illustrated by Terry Milne, Candlewick Press (Cambridge, MA), 1994.

Good Night, Sleep Tight, Candlewick Press (Cambridge, MA), 1995.

Two Bears and Joe, Viking (New York, NY), 1995.

One, Two, Three, Jump!, M.K. McElderry Books (New York, NY), 1998.

In Search of a Homeland: The Story of the Aeneid, illustrated by Ian Andrews, Delacorte Press (New York, NY), 2001.

Also author of The Disastrous Dog. Contributor to children's magazines, including Horn Book and Junior Bookshelf.

ADULT FICTION

The Road to Lichfield, Heinemann, (London, England), 1977, Penguin (New York, NY), 1983.

Nothing Missing but the Samovar and Other Stories, Heinemann (London, England), 1978.

Treasures of Time, Heinemann (London, England), 1979, Doubleday (Garden City, NY), 1980.

Judgement Day, Heinemann (London, England), 1980, Doubleday (New York, NY), 1981, reprinted, Grove Press (New York, NY), 2003.

Next to Nature, Art, Heinemann (London, England), 1982, Penguin (New York, NY), 1984.

Perfect Happiness, Heinemann (London, England), 1983, Dial Press (Garden City, NY), 1984.

Corruption and Other Stories, Heinemann (London, England), 1984.

According to Mark: A Novel, Beaufort Books (New York, NY), 1984.

Pack of Cards (short stories, including "Nothing Missing but the Samovar" and "Corruption"), Heinemann (London, England), 1986, Penguin (New York, NY), 1988.

Moon Tiger, Deutsch (London, England), 1987, Grove Weidenfeld (New York, NY), 1988.

Passing On, Deutsch (London, England), 1989, Grove Weidenfeld (New York, NY), 1990.

City of the Mind, HarperCollins (New York, NY), 1991.

Cleopatra's Sister, HarperCollins (New York, NY), 1993.

Heat Wave, HarperCollins (New York, NY), 1996.

The Five Thousand and One Nights, Fjord Press (Seattle, WA), 1997.

Beyond the Blue Mountains, Viking (New York, NY), 1997.

Spiderweb, HarperCollins (New York, NY), 1999.

The Photograph, Viking (London, England), 2001, Viking (New York, NY), 2003.

OTHER

Boy Dominic (television play; three episodes), Yorkshire TV, 1974.

Time out of Mind (television play for children), BBC-TV, 1976.

(Author of introduction) Ivy Compton-Burnett, Father and His Fate, Oxford University Press (New York, NY), 1984.

(Author of introduction) Ivy Compton-Burnett, Manservant and Maidservant, Oxford University Press (New York, NY), 1987.

(Author of introduction) Edith Wharton, The Age of Innocence, Virago (London, England), 1988.

(Author of introduction) Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland, Everyman (London, England), 1993.

Oleander, Jacaranda: A Childhood Perceived (memoir), HarperCollins (New York, NY), 1994.

(Author of introduction) Willa Cather, My Antonia, Everyman (London, England), 1996.

(Author of introduction) The Mythical Quest, British Library (London, England), 1996.

A House Unlocked (memoir), Viking (New York, NY), 2001.

Also contributor to books, including My England, Heinemann (New York, NY), 1973. Contributor of short stories and articles to periodicals, including Encounter, Vogue, Cosmopolitan, Good Housekeeping, Literary Review, and Quarto. Reviewer for newspapers and author of television and radio scripts. Many of Lively's writings have been translated into other languages.

ADAPTATIONS: Several of Lively's books have been adapted as audiobooks, including House Inside Out, Chivers Press, 1988. The Ghost of Thomas Kempe was adapted for television by ABC-TV, 1979.

SIDELIGHTS: Penelope Lively, author of more than forty books for children and adults, has distinguished herself as a writer of both juvenile and adult books in a career spanning over thirty years. She has won such prestigious awards as the Booker-McConnell Prize and the Whitbread Award. Publishers Weekly contributor Amanda Smith considered Lively "one of England's finest writers," and added that her novels are "characterized by intelligence, precision and wit." Sheila A. Egoff, in her Thursday's Child: Trends and Patterns in Contemporary Children's Literature, wrote that Lively "has an uncannily accurate and honest recall of what it is like to be a child in a world made for adults." As to her adult fiction, a Times Literary Supplement reviewer commented that Lively conveys "a prose that is invariably as precise as it is unostentatious."

Lively began writing children's books while raising her two children, Josephine and Adam. Writing stories for children was a convenient way to express her interests. Lively's first published novel, Astercote, explored her fascination with deserted medieval villages. Although the book was criticized for its lack of living characters and convincing dialogue, reviewers also found it intriguing and exciting. Lively published two subsequent juvenile novels, The Whispering Knights and The Driftway. The Driftway follows Paul and his tag-along sister as he runs away from his stepmother and a charge of shoplifting. He comes across an old road which has been used for thousands of years by various travelers. These travelers have left messages from the past, which Paul is able to see and interpret with the help of a cart-driver named Bill. Margery Fisher, editor of Growing Point, explained that each "interlude reflects part of Paul's situation and brings him a step nearer to understanding himself and his family." The characters from the past make him aware that "there is more than one point of view to every story, and he takes the first steps away from the morbid self-absorption of childhood towards feeling sympathy for others," concluded a Times Literary Supplement reviewer. Some writers such as John Rowe Townsend felt that the point of the story is weakened because the book as a whole lacks a strong storyline—the reader never does find out what happens to Paul and his sister. However, Junior Bookshelf contributor Aneurin R. Williams expressed her belief that, overall, "Lively writes well, exceeding by far the style and effect of" her earlier work. The Driftway won the Children's Spring Book Festival Award in 1973.

Lively's best-received juvenile book, The Ghost of Thomas Kempe, offers a light approach to the coming-of-age theme. The author uses one of her favorite devices in this book: the ghost. The purpose of Thomas Kempe's character, explained Lively in Junior Bookshelf, is to explore "the memory of places and the memory of people, and the curious business that we are all of us not just what we are now but what we have been." Putting this another way, Children's Literature in Education contributor Judith Armstrong wrote that this book "is concerned with different aspects of the same person, the person [James] might have been, or might still become, had he not encountered the ghost of his potential self." The story involves a boy's visitation by the spirit of a sorcerer from Stuart England. At first, the ghost seems only mischievous, but slowly becomes more and more menacing. James learns through the ghost what wickedness is, and is only able to put Kempe to rest by learning to recognize and cope with the wickedness within himself. Many critics agreed that The Ghost of Thomas Kempe is a well-written children's book. David Rees, author of The Marble in the Water: Essays on Contemporary Writers of Fiction for Children and Young Adults, felt that the book is of such high quality because for the first time "the author is completely sure of her own abilities, and the writing has a positiveness that derives from the author's pleasure in her awareness of these abilities."

Rees had even higher praise for A Stitch in Time, Lively's Whitbread Award winner. "A Stitch in Time is probably Penelope Lively's most important and memorable book," he declared. "Not only is its exploration of the significance of history and memory more profound than in any other of her novels, but the unfolding of the story is very fine." As Times Literary Supplement reviewer Ann Thwait noted, the story does not have a great deal of plot action, since most of this action occurs unobtrusively within the mind of Marie, the main character. Marie, who is spending her vacation with her parents in an old Victorian house in Lyme Regis, discovers a sampler made in 1865 by a girl named Harriet. The sampler provides a link to the past which Marie senses through such things as the squeaking of a swing and the barking of a dog, neither of which exist near the house at the present; they are only echoes of the past. The tension in the story lies in Marie's suspicion that something tragic has happened to Harriet, a belief supported by the lack of any pictures in the house of Harriet as an adult. Though the mystery is eventually solved, the real message of the book is summarized by the owner of the old house when he sagely remarks: "Things always could have been otherwise. The fact of the matter is that they are not." This declaration, explained Terry Jones, a contributor to Children's Literature in Education, "finally ends Maria's 'vague imaginings' and completes one part of her education…. She leaves the Regency house determined to acquire 'some new wisdom about the way things are.' She grows, and the reader grows with her."

"The Voyage of QV66 (1978) is a radical departure from all of Lively's earlier books," contended Alan McLay in the Dictionary of Literary Biography. At some unspecified time in the future, a cataclysmic event has wiped out the earth's human population. Animals have taken the place of humans, taking on speech and other human skills. For this tale, Lively has brought together six animals, including Pal, the dog, and Stanley, the monkey, to take a voyage to London in the boat QV66. In following the animals along their journey, the book "views human nature and civilization from a wry, ironic perspective," noted McLay. He continued, "Readers are invited to laugh at the ways in which the animals imitate human behavior but are also exposed to the caustic comments made about humans, especially their habits of eating animals and killing one another with sharp sticks." In the end, the six voyagers find that the world has not changed; animals have simply replaced humans in carrying out the same human follies. Even so, as McLay pointed out, "The little group of animals on the QV66 … represents the virtues of friendship, loyalty, and community and offers hope for the future."

Lively continued to write children's books throughout the 1980s, including such titles as The Revenge of Samuel Stokes, Uninvited Guests and Other Stories, and A House Inside Out. In 1993, she published another tale of animals who carry on like people. The Cat, the Crow and the Banyan Tree portrays two friends, the cat and the crow, who live beneath the banyan tree, where they spend their time telling stories to each other. Critics have described the tales told by cat and crow as whimsical, imaginative, delightful, but potentially confusing for children. A reviewer for Publishers Weekly observed that "Lively's narrative percolates with rhythm" and focuses interestingly on the process of storytelling itself.

Although she continued to write for children, in the late 1970s, after writing children's books for almost a decade, Lively decided it was time to change her primary focus. "I began to feel that I was in danger of writing the same children's books over and over again," she explained in Publishers Weekly. "More than that, I'd exhausted the ways in which I could explore my own preoccupations and interests within children's books." In writing for an older audience, the author has maintained her interest in the past and memory, but has followed a different approach. Her adult characters consider memory "in the context of a lifetime rather than in the context of history," explained Lively in Horn Book. These later works no longer deal with how the past can teach one to mature so much as how it can change one's perspective or philosophy of life.

Lively's first novel for adults, The Road to Lichfield, is a complex tale about what happens to a married history teacher named Anne Linton when her conceptions about her childhood family life are suddenly altered. While going through her dying father's papers, she discovers that he was involved in an affair similar to her own extramarital relationship. "As everything in her life swings and changes, her father dies, her love is choked off, and only the road [between her present life in Cuxing and her childhood memories of Lichfield] remains permanent," summarized Jane Langton in the Dictionary of Literary Biography. "There is nothing very original about the plot" of The Road to Lichfield, noted John Mellors in the Listener, but the "book is lifted out of the ordinary by the author's treatment of her two main themes: continuity and memory."

In Lively's Booker-McConnell Award-winning story Moon Tiger, the "true center is no less than history itself—the abiding backdrop across which mere human beings flutter," said Anne Tyler in the New York Times Book Review. It is "the transitoriness of all human happiness and indeed of all human life" which is the concern of a respected historian, Claudia Hampton, as she considers her life from the vantage point of her deathbed, explained Francis King in a Spectator article. In this book, a complex interweaving of flashbacks takes the reader on a voyage through the dying historian's life, including a sojourn in World War II Egypt, where Claudia finds brief happiness with a tank commander, who is later killed in action. "Her image for their love," wrote Richard Eder of the Los Angeles Times Book Review, "is the moon tiger—a spiral coil of punk that burns slowly through the night beside their bed to keep away mosquitoes and that leaves only ash in the morning."

Parallel to this image are the last lines of the book in which Claudia passes away: "The sun sinks and the glittering tree is extinguished. The room darkens again…. And within the room a change has taken place. It is empty. Void. It has the stillness of a place in which there are only inanimate objects; metal, wood, glass, plastic. No Life." The denouement marks the end of, in Eder's words, Claudia's "long postponed search for herself." For some critics, like Martha Duffy of Time magazine, the flashbacks involved in her search become "overdrawn" after a while. However, many reviewers concurred with Times Literary Supplement contributor J.K.L. Walker, who wrote: "Lively's ingenious, historically informed handling of [the story] is a considerable achievement and Claudia Hampton herself a formidably reflective and articulate protagonist." It is a tale told from the most widely encompassing perspective possible for a human being, a study of one character's entire lifetime memory and how she regards it. Writing in the New York Times Book Review, Jay Parini commented: "In that inventive recreation of life in Egypt during World War II, an evocative mixture of memory and desire, Ms. Lively established herself as a novelist of the first rank." Although Lively bases most of Moon Tiger upon the memory of a single character, exploring this favorite subject in depth, the author admitted to herself in Horn Book: "I don't imagine that I am ever going to find the answer to the questions prompted by the workings of memory; all I can do is pose these questions in fictional form and see what happens."

Aisling Foster, in the Times Literary Supplement, viewed Lively's novel Heat Wave as "all about the power of love: protective maternal love, promiscuous sexual love, the nurturing love of Mother Nature and our love of animals and countryside which is both benign and exploitative." Set in the English countryside, the novel explores themes that have interested Lively in past works: history in the context of the present, and myth versus reality. The main protagonist is Pauline, a fifty-five-year-old freelance copy-editor who worries that her daughter will repeat her own mistakes. "Most importantly," commented a reviewer in Publishers Weekly, Lively "creates a convincing picture of obsessive sexual love tainted by jealousy and misery, and of the kind of maternal love that carries its own impla-cable mandates." While all this transpires, England is in the grip of some uncharacteristic weather. "The tension mounts as temperatures rise," observed Donna Seaman in Booklist, "but Lively keeps cool as she leads us to a surprise denouement—her impeccable prose delectably restrained, her humor neat and vicious, and her articulation of emotional states keen and vivifying." "The novel makes clear," in the estimation of People's Joanne Kaufman, "that Lively knows well the topography of the human heart."

In A House Unlocked Lively explores her memories of her ancestral home Golsoncott in Somerset, England, which was originally bought by her grandparents in 1923. In 1995 the family had to sell the house after Lively's aunt died, and as Lively told Robert McCrum in the Observer, "My children and I were all heartbroken." They spent a great deal of time reminiscing about the house, until Lively realized "that I had this memory house and would never lose it." However, the book considers the loss of the house, and is an elegy to the era that the house embodied, as well as to the people who lived in it. A Publishers Weekly reviewer wrote that the book "unlocks more than the house and its century."

In the Dictionary of Literary Biography, Ruth P. Fein-gold remarked, "Over the course of her career Penelope Lively has produced an astonishing quantity of well-crafted, sometimes brilliant work…. The structural complexity of her texts is matched by their intellectual and moral rigor: seldom possessed of neat resolutions, her adult novels in particular tend to illustrate her view that 'I have never come to terms with life, and I wouldn't wish anyone else to do so; if fiction is to help at all in the process of living, it is by illuminating its conflicts and ambiguities.'"

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

BOOKS

Children's Literature Review, Volume 7, Thomson Gale (Detroit, MI), 1984.

Contemporary Literary Criticism, Thomson Gale (Detroit, MI), Volume 32, 1985, Volume 50, 1989.

Dictionary of Literary Biography, Thomson Gale (Detroit, MI), Volume 14: British Novelists since 1960, 1983, Volume 161: British Children's Writers since 1960, 1996, Volume 207: British Novelists since 1960, Third Series, 1999.

Egoff, Sheila A., Thursday's Child: Trends and Patterns in Contemporary Children's Literature, American Library Association (Chicago, IL), 1981.

Ellis, Alec, and Marcus Crouch, editors, Chosen for Children: An Account of the Books Which Have Been Awarded the Library Association Carnegie Medal, 1936–1975, 3rd edition, American Library Association (Chicago, IL), 1977.

Moran, Mary Hurley, Penelope Lively, Twayne (New York, NY), 1993.

Rees, David, The Marble in the Water: Essays on Contemporary Writers of Fiction for Children and Young Adults, Horn Book (Boston, MA), 1980, pp. 185-198.

St. James Guide to Children's Writers, 5th edition, St. James Press (Detroit, MI), 1999.

Townsend, John Rowe, A Sounding of Storytellers: New and Revised Essays on Contemporary Writers for Children, Lippincott (New York, NY), 1979.

PERIODICALS

Belles Lettres, spring, 1992, pp. 26-29.

Booklist, March 15, 1994, p. 1322; June 1, 1995, p. 1787; August, 1996, p. 1854; February 15, 1998, p. 1027; October 15, 2000, Karen Harris, review of Spiderweb, p. 471; March 1, 2002, Donna Seaman, review of A House Unlocked, p. 1084.

Book Report, March, 2002, review of In Search of a Homeland, p. 69.

Books for Keeps, November, 2001, review of In Search of a Homeland, p. 27; January, 2002, review of The Driftway, p. 22.

Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books, June, 1999, review of One, Two, Three, Jump, p. 358.

Chicago Tribune Book World, August 9, 1981; May 15, 1988.

Children's Bookwatch, January, 2002, review of In Search of a Homeland, p. 1.

Children's Literature, number 18, 1990, pp. 53-67.

Children's Literature in Education, summer, 1978, pp. 59-66; autumn, 1981.

Children's Literature Quarterly, winter, 1984–85, pp. 157-64; fall, 1985, pp. 114-16.

Encounter, May, 1981.

Globe and Mail (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), November 14, 1987; October 6, 2001, review of A House Unlocked, p. D23.

Growing Point, July, 1972; July, 1973.

Horn Book, June, 1973; August, 1973; February, 1978; April, 1978; March, 1999, p. 164; fall, 1999, review of One, Two, Three, Jump, p. 237.

International Fiction Review, January, 2001, Nora Foster Stovel, review of Spiderweb, p. 115.

Journal of the Short Story in English, autumn, 1989, pp. 103-111.

Junior Bookshelf, September, 1972; June, 1974.

Kirkus Reviews, February 1, 1999, review of Spiderweb, p. 170; February 1, 2002, review of A House Unlocked, p. 161.

Library Journal, November 1, 1997, p. 130; October 1, 1999, Richard Oloizia, review of Spiderweb, p. 160; April 1, 2002, Ravi Shenoy, review of A House Unlocked, p. 129; April 1, 2003, review of The Photograph, p. 498.

Listener, August 4, 1977.

Los Angeles Times Book Review, April 17, 1988; April 25, 1999, review of Spiderweb, p. 23.

New Statesman, May 8, 1987, p. 23; October 2, 1987, p. 31; April 23, 1993, p. 33; June 3, 1994, p. 44; January 20, 2003, Amanda Craig, review of The Photograph, p. 51.

New Statesman and Society, April 12, 1991, p. 35.

New Welsh Review, spring, 1990, pp. 36-38.

New Yorker, November 18, 1991, p. 134; June 14, 1993, p. 99.

New York Times Book Review, April 17, 1988, p. 9; May 21, 1989, p. 13; February 11, 1990, p. 12; February 17, 1991, p. 7; September 1, 1991, p. 6; April 25, 1993, p. 7; June 12, 1994, p. 32; March 19, 1995, p. 19; June 11, 1995, p. 43; March 3, 1996, p. 25; April 11, 1999, review of The Road to Lichfield and Pack of Cards and Other Stories, p. 40.

Observer, April 25, 1993; November 14, 1999, review of Spiderweb, p. 15; August 26, 2001, review of A House Unlocked, p. 16.

People, July 25, 1994, p. 26; January 13, 1997, p. 28.

Publishers Weekly, November 13, 1987; February 12, 1988, p. 71; March 25, 1988, pp. 47-48; February 3, 1989, p. 97; May 21, 1989; December 1, 1989, p. 48; November 23, 1990, p. 56; February 11, 1990; June 21, 1991, p. 53; February 8, 1993, p. 76; March 7, 1994, p. 61; March 14, 1994, p. 73; April 10, 1995, p. 61; July 1, 1996, p. 41; May 26, 1997, p. 68; February 1, 1999, review of Spiderweb, p. 72; March 15, 1999, review of One, Two, Three, Jump, p. 56; March 4, 2002, review of A House Unlocked, p. 67.

School Library Journal, February, 1988, p. 73; May, 1994, p. 99; June, 1995, p. 91; February 1, 1999, review of Spiderweb, p. 72; March 15, 1999, review of One, Two, Three, Jump, p. 56; July, 1999, review of One, Two, Three, Jump, p. 76.

Spectator, November 22, 1980; May 23, 1987; September 1, 2001, review of A House Unlocked, p. 35.

Time, May 2, 1988, p. 86.

Times (London, England), October 30, 1987.

Times Educational Supplement, September 10, 1999, review of The House in Northam Gardens, p. 31.

Times Literary Supplement, July 14, 1972; April 6, 1973; July 16, 1976; November 21, 1980; May 23, 1986; October 17, 1986; May 15, 1987; April 7, 1989; April 23, 1993; May 24, 1996, p. 27; November 9, 2001, review of A House Unlocked, p. 25.

Wall Street Journal, April 2, 1999, review of Spiderweb, p. W7.

Washington Post Book World, August 2, 1981; September 13, 1988.

Woman's Journal, December, 1999, review of Spiderweb, p. 18.

ONLINE

Observer, http://www.observer.co.uk/ (August 26, 2001), Robert McCrum, interview with Lively.

Penelope Lively Web site, http://www.penelopelively.net/ (May 28, 2003).