Diana Athill’s Followers (232)

Diana Athill

Born

in Norfolk, The United Kingdom

December 21, 1917

Died

January 23, 2019

Genre

Memoir, Fiction

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Diana Athill was a British literary editor, novelist and memoirist who worked with some of the greatest writers of the 20th century at the London-based publishing company André Deutsch Ltd.

She was born in Norfolk in 1917 and educated at home until she was fourteen. She read English at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford and graduated in 1939. She spent the war years working at the BBC Overseas Service in the News Information Department. After the war she met André Deutsch and fell into publishing. She worked as an editor, first at Allan Wingate and then at André Deutsch, until her retirement at the age of 75 in 1993.

Her books include An Unavoidable Delay, a collection of short stories published in 1962 and two 'documentary' books After A Funeral a ...more

27 posts
Diana Athill's Blog

Diana Athill isn't a Goodreads Author (yet), but they do have a blog, so here are some recent posts imported from their feed.

Diana Athill on VS Naipaul: ‘I worked very hard at keeping affection for him'

VS Naipaul’s first publisher remembers a brilliant, difficult man – and the books that made his name

I remember the night Vidia won the Booker prize for In a Free State in 1971. He’d always behave as if things like this were a bore, and he said he wouldn’t go. I very rarely scolded him, but at this point I said: “You will bloody well come. How can we go on publishing you if you won’t collaborate?”

Combine Editions
Diana Athill’s books

Average rating: 3.87 · 11,389 ratings · 1,790 reviews · 34 distinct works • Similar authors

	Somewhere Towards the End 3.72 avg rating — 3,129 ratings — published 2008 — 46 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Stet: An Editor's Life 3.94 avg rating — 1,623 ratings — published 2000 — 26 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Alive, Alive Oh!: And Other Things That Matter 3.83 avg rating — 1,064 ratings — published 2015 — 9 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Don't Look at Me Like That 3.95 avg rating — 873 ratings — published 1967 — 16 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Instead of a Letter: A Memoir 3.89 avg rating — 871 ratings — published 1962 — 36 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	A Florence Diary 3.58 avg rating — 456 ratings — published 2016 — 2 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Yesterday Morning 3.89 avg rating — 263 ratings — published 2002 — 11 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	After a Funeral 3.87 avg rating — 253 ratings — published 1986 — 17 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Midsummer Night in the Workhouse 3.67 avg rating — 207 ratings — published 1962 — 13 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Life Class: The Selected Memoirs 4.28 avg rating — 135 ratings — published 2009 — 8 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

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Quotes by Diana Athill (?)

“I am not sure that digging in our past guilts is a useful occupation for the very old, given that one can do so little about them. I have reached a stage at which one hopes to be forgiven for concentrating on how to get through the present.”
― Diana Athill, Somewhere Towards the End

24 likes

“An important aspect of the ebbing of sex was that other things became interesting. Sex obliterates the individuality of young women more often than it does that of young men, because so much more of a woman than a man is used by sex.”
― Diana Athill, Somewhere Towards the End

tags: aging, life, sex, somewhere-towards-the-end, women

11 likes

“To me it was plain silly. It is so obvious that life works in terms of species rather than individuals. The individual just has to be born, to develop to the point at which it can procreate, and then to fall away into death to make way for its successors, and humans are no exception whatever they may fancy.”
― Diana Athill , Somewhere Towards the End

tags: growing-old, life, social-science

9 likes

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