Hilary Mantel, author of the Wolf Hall trilogy and twice the winner of the Booker Prize, died last week at age 70. She won the Booker for the first two books in the trilogy, Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies. Bring Up the Bodies also won the Costa Award. The third book in the trilogy, The Mirror & the Light (2020), was longlisted for the Booker and won the Walter Scott Prize for historical fiction. Her many other titles included Learning to Talk: Stories, Giving Up the Ghost: A Memoir, A Place of Greater Safety, Beyond Black, Fludd, An Experiment in Love and The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher: Stories.
"This is terrible, tragic news and we are filled with sorrow for Hilary's family and friends, especially her devoted husband, Gerald," said HarperCollins CEO Charlie Redmayne in the Bookseller. "We are so proud that Fourth Estate and HarperCollins were Hilary's publisher, and for such a peerless body of work. A writer to the core, Hilary was one of the greatest of her generation--a serious, fearless novelist with huge empathy for her subjects. Who else could have brought Thomas Cromwell, Henry VIII and the huge cast of the Wolf Hall Trilogy to life with such insight, frailty and humanity but her? We will all miss Hilary's company, her wisdom, her humour, and treasure her incredible literary legacy--she will be read as long as people are still reading."
In a New Yorker magazine tribute, Larissa MacFarquhar observed: "If Britain were as grateful for her as it ought to be, there would be another funeral next week, as magnificent as the one for the Queen this week, though it would be attended by different people because Mantel could be rude about royalty. There are not many writers who, like prophets, seize, melt down, and reshape the archetypal stories of their people."
The Mirror & the Light is available in paperback from Picador ($18).