Hill, Susan 1942- (Susan Elizabeth Hill)

PERSONAL:

Born February 5, 1942, in Scarborough, England; daughter of R.H. and Doris Hill; married Stanley W. Wells (a Shakespearean scholar), April 23, 1975; children: Jessica, Imogen (deceased), Clemency. Education: King's College, London, B.A. (with honors), 1963. Religion: Anglican. Hobbies and other interests: Walking in the English countryside, friends, reading, broadcasting.

ADDRESSES:

Home—Oxford, England. Agent—Vivien Green, Sheil Land, 43 Doughty St., London WC1N 2LF, England. E-mail—susan@susan-hill.com.

CAREER:

Novelist, playwright, and critic, 1960—. Coventry Evening Telegraph, Coventry, England, literary critic, 1963-68; Daily Telegraph, London, England, monthly columnist, 1977—. Fellow of King's College, London, 1978. Presenter, Bookshelf, Radio 4, 1986-87.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Somerset Maugham Award, 1971, for I'm the King of the Castle; Whitbread Literary Award for fiction, 1972, for The Bird of Night; John Llewelyn Rhys Memorial Prize, 1972, for The Albatross; Royal Society of Literature fellow, 1972.

WRITINGS:

NOVELS

The Enclosure, Hutchinson (London, England), 1961.

Do Me a Favour, Hutchinson (London, England), 1963.

Gentleman and Ladies, Hamish Hamilton (London, England), 1968, Walker (New York, NY), 1969.

A Change for the Better, Hamish Hamilton (London, England), 1969, Penguin (New York, NY), 1980.

I'm the King of the Castle, Viking (New York, NY), 1970.

Strange Meeting, Hamish Hamilton (London, England), 1971, Saturday Review Press (New York, NY), 1972.

The Bird of Night, Saturday Review Press (New York, NY), 1972.

In the Springtime of the Year, Saturday Review Press (New York, NY), 1974.

The Woman in Black: A Ghost Story, Hamish Hamilton (London, England), 1983, David Godine (Boston, MA), 1986.

Air and Angels (romance), Mandarin (London, England), 1991.

The Mist in the Mirror: A Ghost Story, Sinclair-Stevenson (London, England), 1992.

Mrs. de Winter, Morrow (New York, NY), 1993.

The Service of Clouds, Chatto & Windus (London, England), 1997, Vintage (New York, NY), 1999.

"SIMON SERRAILLER" CRIME NOVELS

The Various Haunts of Men, Chatto & Windus (London, England), 2004, Overlook Press (Woodstock, NY), 2007.

The Pure in Heart, Chatto & Windus (London, England), 2005.

The Risk of Darkness, Chatto & Windus (London, England), 2006.

JUVENILE

The Ramshackle Company (play), produced in London, England, 1981.

One Night at a Time, illustrated by Vanessa Julian-Ottie, Hamish Hamilton (London, England), 1984.

Through the Kitchen Window, illustrated by Angela Barrett, Hamish Hamilton (London, England), 1984, Stemmer House (Owings Mills, MD), 1986.

Go Away, Bad Dreams!, illustrated by Vanessa Julian-Ottie, Random House (New York, NY), 1985.

Can It Be True? A Christmas Story, illustrated by Angela Barrett, Viking (New York, NY), 1988.

Mother's Magic, illustrated by Alan Marks, David & Charles (Newton Abbot, Devon, England), 1988.

Suzy's Shoes, illustrated by Priscilla Lamont, Puffin (New York, NY), 1989.

Stories from Codling Village, illustrated by C. Crossland, Julia MacRae (New York, NY), 1990.

I Won't Go There Again, illustrated by Jim Bispham, Julia MacRae (New York, NY), 1990.

Septimus Honeydew, illustrated by Carol Thompson, Julia MacRae (New York, NY), 1990.

(Editor) The Walker Book of Ghost Stories, illustrated by Angela Barrett, Walker (New York, NY), 1990, published as The Random House Book of Ghost Stories, Random House (New York, NY), 1991.

The Glass Angels, illustrated by Valerie Littlewood, Candlewick Press (Cambridge, MA), 1992.

A Very Special Birthday, Walker (New York, NY), 1992.

King of Kings, illustrated by John Lawrence, Candlewick Press (Cambridge, MA), 1993.

Beware, Beware, illustrated by Angela Barrett, Candlewick Press (Cambridge, MA), 1993.

White Christmas, Candlewick Press (Cambridge, MA), 1994.

The Christmas Collection, Candlewick Press (Cambridge, MA), 1994.

(Editor and author of introduction) The Spirit of Britain: An Illustrated Guide to Literary Britain, Hodder Headline (London, England), 1994.

(Coauthor) Diana: The Secret Years, Ballantine (New York, NY), 1998.

Simba's A-Z, Disney Press (New York, NY), 1998.

I'm the King of the Castle, Longman (Harlow, England), 2000.

Backyard Bedtime, illustrated by Barry Root, HarperCollins (New York, NY), 2001.

Also author of I've Forgotten Edward, 1990, and Pirate Poll, 1991.

"STUART" SERIES; FOR CHILDREN

Stuart Hides Out, illustrated by Lydia Halverson, HarperCollins (New York, NY), 2001.

Stuart Sets Sail, illustrated by Lydia Halverson, HarperCollins (New York, NY), 2001.

Stuart at the Fun House, illustrated by Lydia Halverson, HarperCollins (New York, NY), 2001.

Stuart at the Library, illustrated by Lydia Halverson, HarperCollins (New York, NY), 2001.

"RUBY" SERIES; FOR CHILDREN

Ruby Bakes a Cake, illustrated by Margie Moore, HarperCollins (New York, NY), 2004.

Ruby Paints a Picture, HarperCollins (New York, NY), 2005.

Ruby's Perfect Day, HarperCollins (New York, NY), 2006.

RADIO PLAYS

Miss Lavender Is Dead, British Broadcasting Corp. (BBC Radio), 1970.

Taking Leave, BBC Radio, 1971.

The End of Summer (also see below), BBC Radio, 1971.

Lizard in the Grass (also see below), BBC Radio, 1971.

The Cold Country (also see below), BBC Radio, 1972.

Winter Elegy, BBC Radio, 1973.

Consider the Lilies (also see below), BBC Radio, 1973.

A Window on the World, BBC Radio, 1974.

Strip Jack Naked (also see below), BBC Radio, 1974.

Mr Proudham and Mr Sleight, BBC Radio, 1974.

The Cold Country and Other Plays for Radio (includes The Cold Country, The End of Summer, Lizard in the Grass, Consider the Lilies, and Strip Jack Naked), BBC Publications (London, England), 1975.

On the Face of It, BBC Radio, 1975, published in Act 1, edited by David Self and Ray Speakman, Hutchinson (London, England), 1979.

The Summer of the Giant Sunflower, BBC Radio, 1977.

The Sound That Time Makes, BBC Radio, 1980.

Here Comes the Bride, BBC Radio, 1980.

Chances, BBC Radio, 1981, stage adaptation produced in London, 1983.

Out in the Cold, BBC Radio, 1982.

Autumn, BBC Radio, 1985.

Winter, BBC Radio, 1985.

OTHER

The Albatross (short stories), Hamish Hamilton (London, England), 1971, published as The Albatross and Other Stories, Saturday Review Press (New York, NY), 1975.

The Custodian (short stories), Covent Garden Press (London, England), 1972.

A Bit of Singing and Dancing (short stories), Hamish Hamilton (London, England), 1973.

The Elephant Man, Cambridge University Press (New York, NY), 1975.

(Editor and author of introduction) Thomas Hardy, The Distracted Preacher and Other Tales, Penguin (London, England), 1980.

(Editor, with Isabel Quigly) New Stories V, Hutchinson (London, England), 1980.

Improving Interpersonal Competence, Kendall/Hunt Publishing (Dubuque, IA), 1982.

(Translator, with Jonathan Tittler) Adalberto Ortiz, Juyungo: The First Black Ecuadorian Novel, Three Continents, 1982.

The Magic Apple Tree: A Country Year, Hamish Hamilton (London, England), 1982, Holt (New York, NY), 1983.

(Editor) Ghost Stories, Hamish Hamilton (London, England), 1983.

(Editor) People: Essays and Poems, Chatto & Windus (London, England), 1983.

The Lighting of the Lamps, David & Charles (London, England), 1986.

Books Alive! Using Literature in the Classroom, Heinemann (London, England), 1986.

Shakespeare Country, photographs by Rod Talbot, Penguin (London, England), 1987.

(Editor, with Joelie Hancock) Literature-Based Reading Programs at Work, Heinemann Educational (London, England), 1988.

Through the Garden Gate, David & Charles (London, England), 1988.

Lanterns Across the Snow, Crown (New York, NY), 1988.

The Spirit of the Cotswolds, photographs by Nick Meers, M. Joseph (London, England), 1988, Viking (New York, NY), 1990.

Family (autobiography), Viking (New York, NY), 1989.

(With Tim Hill) The Collaborative Classroom: A Guide to Co-operative Learning, Heinemann (London, England), 1990.

(Editor) The Parchment Moon: An Anthology of Modern Women's Short Stories, M. Joseph (London, England), 1990, published as The Penguin Book of Modern Women's Short Stories, Penguin (New York, NY), 1991.

(Author of introduction) F.M. Mayor, The Rector's Daughter, Penguin (London, England), 1992.

Crown Devon: The History of S. Fielding and Co., Jazz (Stratford-upon-Avon, England), 1993.

(Editor) Contemporary Women's Short Stories, M. Joseph (London, England), 1995.

(With Rory Stuart) Reflections from a Garden, illustrated by Ian Stephens, Pavilion (London, England), 1995.

(Editor) The Second Penguin Book of Modern Women's Short Stories, Michael Joseph (London, England), 1997.

Listening to the Orchestra, and Other Stories, Long Barn Books (Ebrington, England), 1997.

(Editor, with Sophia Topley) Deborah Vivien Freeman-Mitford Cavendish, Counting My Chickens, and Other Home Thoughts, introduction by Tom Stoppard, Long Barn Books (Ebrington, England), 2001, Farrar, Straus (New York, NY), 2002.

The Boy Who Taught the Beekeeper to Read (stories), Chatto & Windus (London, England), 2003.

Also author of Last Summer's Child (television play; based on her story "The Badness within Him," 1980. Contributor to Winter's Tales 20, edited by A.D. Maclean, Macmillan (London, England), 1974, St. Martin's (New York, NY), 1975, and Penguin New Short Stories.

A collection of Hilla's manuscripts is housed at Eton College Library.

ADAPTATIONS:

Gentleman and Ladies was adapted as a radio play in 1970; The Woman in Black: A Ghost Story was adapted for the stage in 1989 by Stephen Mallatratt.

SIDELIGHTS:

Susan Hill, declared Gale Harris in Belles Lettres, "has been called one of the outstanding novelists of our times." She is "a precociously talented writer," the reviewer continued, who "published her first novel in 1960 when she was eighteen and wrote nine more by the age of thirty-two." Hill's work spans many genres, ranging from the adult novels Strange Meeting and In the Springtime of the Year to the children's stories Septimus Honeydew and The Glass Angels, to the Gothic mystery The Woman in Black: A Ghost Story and the autobiographical Family. In all her works, Hill "has shown a painful awareness of the dark abysses of the spirit—fear, grief, loneliness, and loss," remarked Margaret Willy in Contemporary Novelists. Despite a period of sixteen years after her marriage in 1975, during which she wrote no adult novels, Hill has maintained a productive writing schedule, creating books on gardening and the English countryside, children's books, and book reviews. She has also written many successful radio plays for the British Broadcasting Corporation.

Ann Gibaldi Campbell wrote in the Dictionary of Literary Biography that Hill's career was shaped by the reading she did to fill the solitude she experienced as the only child of older parents, as well as by other events in her life. Hill's children's books often explore themes of self-growth. In I Won't Go There Again she addresses the problem of a young child who does not want to go to school, while in Suzy's Shoes the heroine requires a visit with the queen before she understands when it is appropriate for shoes to be off, and when they should stay on. Septimus Honeydew illustrates another type of family crisis as a small boy, terrified by night fears, seeks the solace of his parents' bed every evening. In her 1993 children's book, Beware, Beware, Hill again explores the themes of fear and the tension between childhood desires and parental limits. As a Publishers Weekly reviewer observed: "The lure of the world beyond the window proves irresistible for the pinafored heroine of this beautifully paced picture book." And, continued the reviewer: "Hill's choice of language is meticulous, her work so carefully crafted as to magnify the import of each word, its resonance and its associations."

The author's own life, and especially the life of one of her children, is the subject of Family. The autobiography tells of Hill's premature second daughter, Imogen, and the infant's struggle to stay alive. Imogen was born only twenty-five weeks into Hill's pregnancy and lived for only five weeks afterward. But during those five weeks she put up a fierce struggle for life.

Hill's writings often present characters who love each other with a spiritual, rather than physical, passion and, through that love, learn to love themselves. Many of Hill's novels are about people who live lifestyles outside the mainstream—"solitary, secretive people," Harris noted, "who are awakened through intimacy with another person into a deeper understanding of life." Strange Meeting, for instance, is about two soldiers in World War I. Soldier John Hilliard, wounded by shrapnel, is returning to the trenches when he meets David Barton, a soldier whose blithe spirit has not yet been broken by the war. Hilliard's regard for Barton deepens into love—a love that survives Barton's eventual disillusionment, cynicism, and emotional withdrawal. In the Springtime of the Year tells of Ruth, a newly widowed woman who has to adjust not only to her new isolation, but also to the hostility of her husband's family, who resent her self-sufficiency and seeming lack of emotion. Ruth comes to understand her feelings about her husband's death and learns that love is, in fact, sometimes stronger than death. "As Ruth learns to endure the long, dark tunnel of grief," Harris found, "she gains hope that she will emerge ‘more herself, remade, whole.’"

Hill portrays her characters' development through carefully chosen language. She places them in isolated spots, emphasizing their situations with a strong sense of atmosphere. For example, as Jonathan Raban stated in London magazine, the tone of Hill's A Change for the Better "is rooted in its dialogue: Miss Hill has created a stylized, yet brilliantly accurate grammar and vocabulary for her distressed gentlefolk—an entirely authentic idiom to be spoken by the living dead as they inhabit their shabby-genteel wasteland. Their language is rigid, archaic, and metrical, a mixture of drab proverbs, oratorical flourishes borrowed from popular romance, and catch phrases from the more sober varieties of adman's English." Raban concluded by noting that Hill has "a fine sense of pace and timing and a delicious eye for incongruous detail."

Other critics have also noted Hill's ability to create atmosphere and mood. Books and Bookmen contributor J.A. Cuddon remarked that in the title story of the story collection The Albatross, "atmosphere and environment are evoked with great skill and feeling and the characters are presented and developed with a kind of austere compassion." Cuddon continued: "The language is spare, the dialogue terse and the tone beautifully adjusted to the severe vision…. The narrative, the events, are simple enough, but long after one has read these stories one is left with a curious, hard-edged almost physical sensation; a feeling of chill and desolation. But not depression. Miss Hill's art brings an elation of its own."

Some critics disagree about Hill's success in presenting her ideas in her stories. In a review of Strange Meeting in Books and Bookmen, Diane Leclercq wrote: "Coming hard on the heels of Susan Hill's very considerable achievements in her most recent work, one expects great things from [this book] … In many respects one gets them: the hard-edged prose, the painstaking detail, some aspects of the portrayal of Hilliard, and many of the minor characters. But the … radical weakness is, perhaps, a failure to realize any of the attitudes that people must have had in the situation at the Western Front." Yet, Margaret Willy, in Contemporary Novelists, believed that Hill understands both characters and situation. Despite the fact that the story at the heart of Strange Meeting is a story of men at war and not part of Hill's personal experience, Willy maintained that Hill offers a "convincing depiction of life from a male viewpoint" and "depicts with power, and at times almost intolerable poignancy, the doomed friendship of two young officers drawn together by their mutual daily contact with destruction and imminent death." Willy added, "There is also an irresistible attraction between opposite temperaments and family backgrounds: the reserved, introspective Hilliard finding inhibition magically thawed in the warmth of his companion Barton's easy, outgoing generosity."

New Republic reviewer Michele Murray believed that some of Hill's works have been misjudged. Murray wrote: "The Bird of the Night lacks all those elements that automatically stamp a new novel as ‘profound’ or ‘important,’ and worth noticing. What it has instead are qualities rarely found in contemporary fiction and apparently not much valued, which is a pity." "It is a thoroughly ‘created piece of work,’" Murray declared, "a novel wrought of language carefully designed to tell a story drawn, not from the surface of the author's life or fragments of her autobiography, but from the heart of the imagination…. The careful shaping of material to make its effect with the utmost economy, adhered to and practiced by such modern masters as Gide, Woolf, Colette, and Pavese, seems to have fallen into abeyance, and it is good to see it once again employed with such great skill."

Murray called In the Springtime of the Year "another triumph by an artist who, in her quiet, steady way, is fast becoming one of the outstanding novelists of our time." She went on to say that Hill "has already demonstrated her mastery of character-drawing and fictional technique in her earlier novels, but In the Springtime of the Year, with its deliberate stripping away of almost all the elements of conventional fiction, represents a remarkable advance in what is turning out to be a considerable oeuvre for such a young writer." Margaret Atwood commented in the New York Times Book Review that, despite "lapses into simplemindedness, In the Springtime of the Year justifies itself by the intensity of those things it does well: moments of genuine feeling, moments of vision. It is less a novel than the portrait of an emotion, and as this it is poignant and convincing."

Hill's skill in generating atmosphere is reflected in perhaps her best-known book, The Woman in Black: A Ghost Story. An essayist for Contemporary Novelists called The Woman in Black "an atmospherically charged ghost story … related in a formal, rather stately past idiom, although carefully unlocated in any particular time. Full of Jamesian echoes and undercurrents, it traces with chilling compulsiveness the progress of a mysterious and sinister haunting." In the novel, lawyer Arthur Kipps travels to northern England to settle the estate of client Mrs. Drablow. At the deceased woman's remote gothic estate, he witnesses ghostly visitations by a pale woman in old-fashioned dress, and the house begins to reveal secrets from the Drablow family past.

Donna Cox in Intertexts found that Hill successfully invigorated some trappings of the Victorian novel: "The Woman in Black is a tip-tilted text where the darkness of maternal rage and murderous horror at the centre of subject formation is depicted. The missing or dead mother of so many popular Victorian texts haunts these pages—she has become an avenging presence. The mechanics of maternal attachment, encountering the loss of the infant as object, loops back into infantile anger which is boundless and transgressive. The mother's loving gaze becomes the instrument of death."

Times Literary Supplement contributor Patricia Craig found that "the fullest flavour is extracted from every ingredient that goes into The Woman in Black." An essayist for the St. James Guide to Horror, Ghost, and Gothic Writers wrote that "The Woman in Black does manage to be truly menacing in places, due to Hill's fine atmospheric descriptions." Bleiler's only objections to the story were its initially slow plot development and the somewhat "confusing, perhaps even unnecessary" circumstances of the main character's situation. But the story as a whole, Bleiler concluded, "is certainly memorable, one of the strongest stories of supernatural horror that I have read in many years."

Equally evocative settings and atmosphere characterize The Mist in the Mirror, Hill's 1992 return to gothic fiction. It tells the story of James Monmouth, orphaned as a boy and raised in British colonial Africa. Monmouth discovers the writings of the English traveler Conrad Vane. After the death of his guardian, Monmouth sets out to retrace Vane's travels and, after twenty years' travel, to uncover the secrets of Vane's personal past. In the process, according to Times Literary Supplement reviewer Toby Fitton, Monmouth finds "resonances of his own lost childhood—a tantalizing response deep within him whose significance he cannot quite grasp. He soon finds his way to a remote ancestral property in Yorkshire, where the echoes of his childhood continue but are crowded out by evil immanences that eventually involve him in an ordeal of the soul. He manages to extricate himself and to allay the evil haunting him." The atmosphere, according to Ruth Pavey in the London Observer, is pure Victorian London: "the lamplight, leather armchairs, crackling fire, anchovy paste … the murky November night, empty streets, footsteps, chiming clocks." Pavey concluded by calling the book "a faultlessly stylish ghost story."

Despite her long and varied career with its numerous well-respected books, Hill may have received the most attention from general readers for her 1993 novel Mrs. de Winter. The novel is Hill's sequel to the 1938 bestseller Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier. With the approval of du Maurier's family, Hill finished the story du Maurier began, taking up the voice of the book's nameless narrator, Maxim de Winter's second wife, ten years after the end of Rebecca. The destruction of Manderley, de Winter's family estate, has not fully exorcised the ghost of the murdered Rebecca, his first wife. And when "the de Winters, having restlessly knocked around Europe for years, are drawn home following the death of Maxim's sister," explained Lisa Schwarzbaum in Entertainment Weekly, there is more tragedy ahead. Some reviewers found Hill's picture of the de Winters' lives a satisfying conclusion to plot threads du Maurier left hanging. "Far from wrapping things up nicely," stated New Statesman contributor Kathryn Hughes, du Maurier's "resolution is morally—and novelistically—untenable. Hill's task is to work out the moral plot of Rebecca to its final conclusion. Not until Maxim de Winter has paid for the murder of his first wife with his own life can the ghost of Rebecca be laid to rest." Other reviewers were not convinced. New Yorker reviewer Sally Beauman called Mrs. de Winter a "superficial … pastiche." "In all fairness," wrote novelist Rachel Billington in the New York Times Book Review, "Ms. Hill has found a psychologically appropriate and dramatic end to her sequel, but that is not enough."

Hill has also turned her attention to straight detective novels, kicking off her series about Detective Simon Serrailler, who works in the fictional city of Lafferton, in her book The Various Haunts of Men. The Pure in Heart, the second of Serrailler's outings, starts in Venice where the detective is enjoying a few days of vacation, sketching, strolling along the canals, and trying to forget his latest love affair that ended tragically when the woman was killed in Hill's first installment of the series. However, Serrailler's trip is cut short when he must return home to search for a missing boy, abducted from in front of his school. Kate Chisholm, in a review for Spectator, remarked that Hill "captures sinister atmosphere brilliantly … and her characters are drawn with loving attention to detail."

In addition to her varied writing for adults, Hill has produced numerous works of juvenilia. Her "Ruby" books represent only a small number of her charming efforts for children, including Ruby Bakes a Cake and Ruby Paints a Picture, about a young raccoon named Ruby. In the latter book, Ruby sets out to paint a picture of a tree, only to have her composition altered when each of her friends asked to be included. Corrina Austin, reviewing for School Library Journal, remarked: "Although the theme is not unusual, the ending is very satisfying."

From Strange Meeting to Mrs. de Winter, Hill displays an understanding of the transforming effect of disaster. Her protagonists, wrote Harris, "are able to transcend experiences that might be considered brutal, sorrowful, or sordid because they have been allowed a glimpse of another truth beneath the surface of things. Revelations of this nature have been called the gift of angels. This gift is waiting for readers who explore the works of Susan Hill."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

BOOKS

Allen, Walter, The Short Story in English, Oxford University Press (New York, NY), 1981.

Contemporary Literary Criticism, Volume 4, Gale (Detroit, MI), 1973.

Contemporary Novelists, 6th edition, St. James Press (Detroit, MI), 1996.

Dictionary of Literary Biography, Volume 139: British Short-Fiction Writers, 1945-1980, Gale (Detroit, MI), 1994.

Hill, Susan, Family, Viking (New York, NY), 1989.

Hogg, James, editor, English Language and Literature: Positions and Dispositions, University of Salzburg Press (Salzburg, Austria), 1990.

Jefferson, Douglas, and Graham Martin, editors, The Uses of Fiction, Open University Press, 1982.

Lukianowicz, Anna, At Odds with the Rest of the World: Characters in Susan Hill's Early Fiction, Giardini (Pisa, Italy), 1994.

St. James Guide to Horror, Ghost, and Gothic Writers, St. James Press (Detroit, MI), 1998.

Sambrook, Hana, Susan Hill: I'm the King of the Castle, Longman (London, England), 1992.

Staley, Thomas F., editor, Twentieth-Century Women Novelists, Barnes & Noble (Totowa, NJ), 1982.

PERIODICALS

Back Stage West, August 23, 2001, Holly Hildebrand, "Hearts and Darkness," p. 6.

Belles Lettres, spring, 1993, Gale Harris, review of The Glass Angels, p. 11.

Books and Bookmen, April, 1971, J.A. Cuddon, review of The Albatross; January, 1972, Diane Leclercq, review of Strange Meeting.

Bookseller, February 21, 2003, Nicolette Jones, "A Chouchou of an Author," p. 33.

English Review, February, 2003, Alan Jones, "Who Is Haunted by What in The Woman in Black?," p. 10.

Entertainment Weekly, October 22, 1993, Lisa Schwarzbaum, review of Mrs. de Winter, p. 67.

Horticulture, November, 1996, Jane Barker Wright, review of Reflections from a Garden, p. 57.

Intertexts, spring, 2000, Donna Cox, "‘I Have No Story to Tell!’: Maternal Rage in Susan Hill's The Woman in Black," p. 74.

London, November, 1969, Jonathan Raban, review of A Change for the Better.

New Republic, February 16, 1974, Michele Murray, review of The Bird of Night, p. 23; May 18, 1974, Michele Murray, review of In the Springtime of the Year, p. 24.

New Statesman, January 31, 1969, review of Gentleman and Ladies, p. 161; January 25, 1974, review of In the Springtime of the Year, p. 121; November 26, 1993, Kathryn Hughes, review of Mrs. de Winter, p. 44.

New Yorker, November 8, 1993, Sally Beauman, review of Mrs. de Winter, pp. 127-138.

New York Times Book Review, May 18, 1974, Margaret Atwood, review of In the Springtime of the Year; November 7, 1993, Rachel Billington, review of Mrs. de Winter, p. 23.

Observer (London, England), November 1, 1992, Ruth Pavey, review of The Mist in the Mirror: A Ghost Story, p. 62.

Publishers Weekly, September 6, 1993, review of Beware, Beware, p. 94; July 2, 2001, review of Backyard Bedtime, p. 78.

School Library Journal, July, 2005, Corrina Austin, review of Ruby Paints a Picture, p. 75.

Spectator, October 26, 1996, Charlotte Moore, review of Listening to the Orchestra and Other Stories, p. 46; July 12, 2003, Francis King, review of The Boy Who Taught the Beekeeper to Read, p. 40; June 18, 2004, Kate Chisholm, "Turning to Crime," review of The Pure in Heart, p. 40.

Times Literary Supplement, October 14, 1983, Patricia Craig, review of The Woman in Black: A Ghost Story; October 30, 1992, Toby Fitton, review of The Mist in the Mirror, p. 21.

Variety, June 18, 2001, Charles Isherwood, review of The Woman in Black, p. 26.

ONLINE

Susan Hill Web site,http://www.susan-hill.com (November 6, 2003).