Andrea Levy

Template:Short description Template:Use British English Template:Use dmy dates Template:For Template:Infobox writer Andrea Levy Template:Post-nominals (7 March 1956 – 14 February 2019)<ref name="BBC">Template:Cite news</ref><ref name="lea">Template:Cite news</ref><ref name="Innes">Template:Cite news</ref> was an English author best known for the novels Small Island (2004) and The Long Song (2010). She was born in London to Jamaican parents, and her work explores topics related to British Jamaicans and how they negotiate racial, cultural and national identities.<ref name="This is my England">Template:Cite news</ref><ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

Early lifeEdit

Levy was of primarily Afro-Jamaican descent. She had a Jewish paternal grandfather and a Scots maternal great-grandfather.<ref name="This is my England" /> She said in a 2004 article: "Jews went to Jamaica in the 1600s. My paternal grandfather was born Orthodox Jewish, from a very strict family, but after fighting in the First World War he became a Christian and came back and married my grandmother. His family disowned him, so I don't know much about them."<ref name=CaribbeanBeat>Salandy-Brown, Marina (November/December 2004). "Andrea Levy: 'This was not a small story'". Caribbean Beat. Issue 70. Retrieved 15 December 2023.</ref> Her father came to Britain on the Template:HMT in 1948,<ref name="BBC" /> with her mother following later that year on a banana boat.<ref name="lea" /><ref>Template:Cite news Template:Open access</ref><ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

Levy was born in Archway, north London,<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> "the fourth, and baby, of the family, by a long way".<ref name=CaribbeanBeat /> She grew up on a council estate in Highbury, also in north London, and had what she described as "the life of an ordinary London working-class girl".<ref name="Allardice" /><ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> She attended Highbury Hill Grammar School<ref name="BBC" /> and studied textile design and weaving at Middlesex Polytechnic.<ref name="Allardice" />

CareerEdit

Levy began her career as a costume assistant, working part-time in the costume departments of the BBC and the Royal Opera House,<ref name="BBC" /><ref name="Allardice" /> while starting a graphic design company with her husband Bill Mayblin. During this time, she experienced a form of awakening to her identity concerning both her gender and her race.<ref name="Prasad" /> At a racial-awareness session with colleagues at an Islington sex education project, she found herself having to choose between a "white" and "black" side, which she found a "rude awakening".<ref name="lea" /> Having not read a book until the age of 23,<ref name=CaribbeanBeat /> she subsequently became aware of the power of books and began to read "excessively". It was easy enough to find literature by black writers from the United States, but she could find very little literature from black writers in the United Kingdom.<ref name="Prasad">Template:Cite news</ref> (A similar recognition led Marsha Hunt in 1995 to initiate the Saga Prize, for which Levy would become a judge.)<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

Levy began writing in her mid-30s, after her father died. It was not a therapeutic attempt to deal with her loss, but rather a need to understand where she came from.<ref name="Batson-Savage">Template:Cite news Template:Open access</ref> In 1989, she enrolled in Alison Fell's Creative Writing class at the City Lit, continuing with the course for seven years.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

Levy struggled initially to get her work published, her first novel being rejected by several companies that were unsure of how to market her writing.<ref name=lea /> She spoke in a 1999 interview of the "herd mentality" of publishers worried about the possibly limited market appeal of her work: "the main problem was that they perceived it as being just about race, and thought it would only appeal to black readers."<ref name=Hickman>Template:Cite news</ref><ref name="Prasad" /><ref name="Batson-Savage" /> However, as Margaret Busby noted, Levy "proved that to write about... migration from the specific yet complex perspective of being a black English female is not a limitation to finding a wide and appreciative readership, but in fact the exact opposite."<ref name="Prasad" />

WorkEdit

In 1994, Levy's first novel, the semi-autobiographical Every Light in the House BurninTemplate:', was published and attracted favourable reviews. The Independent on Sunday stated: "This story of a young girl in the 60s in north London, child of Jamaican migrants, stands comparison with some of the best stories about growing up poor – humorous and moving, unflinching and without sentiment".<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> Her second novel, Never Far from Nowhere (1996), is a coming-of-age story about two sisters of Jamaican parentage, Vivian and Olive, growing up in Finsbury Park, London in the 1970s.<ref name=":0">Template:Cite book</ref><ref name="Prasad" /> It was long-listed for the Orange Prize.<ref name=Hickman />

After Never Far from Nowhere, Levy visited Jamaica for the first time and what she learned of her family's past provided material for her next book, Fruit of the Lemon (1999).<ref name=":0" /><ref name="BBC" /> The novel is set in England and Jamaica during the Thatcher era, highlighting the differences between Jamaican natives and their British descendants. The New York Times noted the novel "illuminates the general situation facing all children of postcolonial immigrants".<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

Levy's fourth novel, Small Island (2004), which looks at the immediate outcomes of World War II and migration on what became known as the Windrush generation, was a critical success.<ref name="Allardice">Template:Cite news</ref> The GuardianTemplate:'s reviewer, Mike Phillips, praised the writing and the subject matter, calling it Levy's "big book".<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> Levy herself said in 2004: "When I started Small Island I didn't intend to write about the war. I wanted to start in 1948 with two women, one white, one black, in a house in Earls Court, but when I asked myself, 'Who are these people and how did they get here?' I realised that 1948 was so very close to the war that nothing made sense without it. If every writer in Britain were to write about the war years there would still be stories to be told, and none of us would have come close to what really happened. It was such an amazing schism in the middle of a century. And Caribbean people got left out of the telling of that story, so I am attempting to put them back into it. But I am not telling it from only a Jamaican point of view. I want to tell stories from the black and white experience. It is a shared history."<ref name=CaribbeanBeat /> Small Island won three awards, the Whitbread Book of the Year, the Orange Prize and the Commonwealth Writers' Prize.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref><ref name=bbc_si>Template:Cite news</ref> The novel was subsequently made into a two-part television drama of the same title that was broadcast by the BBC in December 2009.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> A stage adaptation written by Helen Edmundson premiered at the National Theatre's Olivier Theatre in 2019,<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> returning in 2022.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

Levy's fifth and final novel, The Long Song, won the 2011 Walter Scott Prize<ref name=Alison>Template:Cite news</ref> and was shortlisted for the 2010 Man Booker Prize.<ref name=manbooker>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> The Daily Telegraph called it a "sensational novel".<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> Kate Kellaway in The Observer commented: "The Long Song reads with the sort of ebullient effortlessness that can only be won by hard work."<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> The novel was adapted as a three-part BBC One television series that was broadcast in December 2018.<ref>Template:Cite magazine</ref><ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

Levy's short book Six Stories and an Essay was published in 2014.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> It begins with an autobiographical essay and includes stories that are drawn from various life experiences.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> Levy contributed to the 2019 anthology New Daughters of Africa (edited by Margaret Busby), which has enabled an annual scholarship at SOAS University of London.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref><ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

Bonnie Greer paid tribute to Andrea Levy: "For every great writer, their own story is in their work, and is all that you really need to know.... What she described was a people integral to what the UK is. Now and forever. And their bard, Andrea Levy, is immortal."<ref>Greer, Bonnie (21 February 2019), "Andrea Levy – An immortal British bard", The New European.</ref>

The Bookseller noted in 2019 that, in the UK, Levy had sold "a total of 1.23 million books for £7.9m, with Small Island her bestseller, selling 758,203 copies in paperback and a further 120,749 for the TV tie-in. It is the biggest-selling winner of the Women's Prize to date."<ref>Template:Cite magazine</ref>

LegacyEdit

Documentary film "Andrea Levy: Her Island Story" (2018)Edit

Levy was the subject of a film profile entitled "Andrea Levy: Her Island Story", first shown in December 2018 in Alan Yentob's BBC One television arts documentary series Imagine.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

Radio profile "Andrea Levy: In Her Own Words" (2020)Edit

The BBC Radio 4 programme "Andrea Levy: In Her Own Words" was broadcast on 8 February 2020 in the Archive on 4 series, drawing on an in-depth interview in 2014 with oral historian Sarah O'Reilly for the British Library's Authors' Lives project, in which Levy spoke on condition that the recording would only be released after her death. The interview was accompanied by contributions from friends of Levy's including Gary Younge, Baroness Lola Young, Louise Doughty, and Margaret Busby, as well as Levy's husband Bill Mayblin.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref><ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

Literary archiveEdit

It was announced in February 2020 that Levy's literary archive had been acquired by the British Library, including notebooks, research material, correspondence, emails and audio recordings.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref><ref>Template:Cite news</ref><ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref><ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

In 2023, the British Library reported that it had recovered previously unknown material from Levy's computer, including a planned TV series on nurse Mary Seacole, an early draft of Small Island, and work on a factual series on the detailed history of the Caribbean for the BBC that never came to fruition.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

Commemorative plaqueEdit

An Islington Heritage Plaque was unveiled in Levy's honour on her childhood home at Twyford House, Elwood Street, in Highbury, on 14 March 2020, at a ceremony attended by her husband Bill Mayblin and family members, Islington councillors, Baroness Lola Young, and other friends.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref><ref>Template:Cite news</ref><ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

Royal Society of Literature pen collectionEdit

In November 2020 it was announced that Levy would be the first writer of colour whose pen would join the Royal Society of Literature's historic collection, which includes pens belonging to George Eliot and Lord Byron.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref><ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

Personal life and deathEdit

File:Levy, Andrea 2019.jpg

Levy's grave in Highgate Cemetery

Levy was married to Bill Mayblin.<ref name="BBC" /> She died on 14 February 2019, aged 62,<ref name="Innes" /> after living with metastatic breast cancer for 15 years, and her ashes were buried on the eastern side of Highgate Cemetery.<ref name="BBC" />

Awards and honoursEdit

2004: Orange Prize for Fiction, winner, Small Island<ref name=bbc_si />
2004: Whitbread Book of the Year, winner, Small Island<ref name=bbc_si />
2005: Commonwealth Writers Prize, winner, Small Island<ref name="Lawless">Template:Cite news Template:Open access</ref>
2005: Elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation

|CitationClass=web }}</ref>

2010: Man Booker Prize, shortlist, The Long Song<ref name=manbooker />
2011: Walter Scott Prize (The Long Song)
2012: Honorary Fellowship of Queen Mary University of London<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation

|CitationClass=web }}</ref>

BibliographyEdit

Every Light in the House Burnin′ (1994). Headline Publishing, Template:ISBN.
Never Far from Nowhere (1996). Headline, Template:ISBN.
Fruit of the Lemon (1999). Review Publishing, Template:ISBN.
Small Island (2004). Review Publishing, Template:ISBN.
The Long Song (2010). Headline Publishing, Template:ISBN.
Six Stories and an Essay (2014). Tinder Press, Template:ISBN.

ReferencesEdit

Template:Reflist

External linksEdit

Template:Official website
Template:British council
Interview with Andrea Levy. City Lit. 30 July 2010.
Younge, Gary (30 January 2010). Template:"'I started to realise what fiction could be. And I thought, wow! You can take on the worldTemplate:'" (interview). The Guardian.
Greer, Bonnie (31 January 2004). "Empire's child: Andrea Levy on Small Island" (interview). The Guardian.
Barranger, Nicola. Template:Usurped. NewBooks.
Andrea Levy at British Library.

Template:Commonwealth Writers' Prize: Best Book Winners Template:Authority control