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Andrea Levy

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For the Spanish politician, see Andrea Levy (politician).
Andrea Levy

FRSL
Born(1956-03-07)7 March 1956
London, England
Died14 February 2019(2019-02-14) (aged 62)
OccupationAuthor
LanguageEnglish
Period1994–2019
Notable worksSmall Island (2004)
The Long Song (2010)
Notable awardsOrange Prize for Fiction
Whitbread Book of the Year
Commonwealth Writers' Prize
Walter Scott Prize
SpouseBill Mayblin
Website
Andrea Levy

Andrea Levy FRSL (7 March 1956 – 14 February 2019)[1][2][3] 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.[4][5]

Early life

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Levy was of primarily Afro-Jamaican descent. She had a Jewish paternal grandfather and a Scots maternal great-grandfather.[4] 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."[6] Her father came to Britain on the HMT Empire Windrush in 1948,[1] with her mother following later that year on a banana boat.[2][7][8]

Levy was born in Archway, north London,[9] "the fourth, and baby, of the family, by a long way".[6] 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".[10][11] She attended Highbury Hill Grammar School[1] and studied textile design and weaving at Middlesex Polytechnic.[10]

Career

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Levy began her career as a costume assistant, working part-time in the costume departments of the BBC and the Royal Opera House,[1][10] 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.[12] 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".[2] Having not read a book until the age of 23,[6] 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.[12] (A similar recognition led Marsha Hunt in 1995 to initiate the Saga Prize, for which Levy would become a judge.)[13]

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.[14] In 1989, she enrolled in Alison Fell's Creative Writing class at the City Lit, continuing with the course for seven years.[15]

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.[2] 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."[16][12][14] 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."[12]

Work

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In 1994, Levy's first novel, the semi-autobiographical Every Light in the House Burnin', 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".[17] 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.[18][12] It was long-listed for the Orange Prize.[16]

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).[18][1] 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".[19]

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.[10] The Guardian's reviewer, Mike Phillips, praised the writing and the subject matter, calling it Levy's "big book".[20] 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."[6] Small Island won three awards, the Whitbread Book of the Year, the Orange Prize and the Commonwealth Writers' Prize.[21][22] The novel was subsequently made into a two-part television drama of the same title that was broadcast by the BBC in December 2009.[23] A stage adaptation written by Helen Edmundson premiered at the National Theatre's Olivier Theatre in 2019,[24] returning in 2022.[25]

Levy's fifth and final novel, The Long Song, won the 2011 Walter Scott Prize[26] and was shortlisted for the 2010 Man Booker Prize.[27] The Daily Telegraph called it a "sensational novel".[28] Kate Kellaway in The Observer commented: "The Long Song reads with the sort of ebullient effortlessness that can only be won by hard work."[29] The novel was adapted as a three-part BBC One television series that was broadcast in December 2018.[30][31]

Levy's short book Six Stories and an Essay was published in 2014.[32] It begins with an autobiographical essay and includes stories that are drawn from various life experiences.[33] 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.[34][35]

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."[36]

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."[37]

Legacy

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

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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.[38]

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

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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.[39][40]

Literary archive

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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.[41][42][43][44]

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.[45]

Commemorative plaque

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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.[46][47][48]

Royal Society of Literature pen collection

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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.[49][50]

Personal life and death

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Levy's grave in Highgate Cemetery

Levy was married to Bill Mayblin.[1] She died on 14 February 2019, aged 62,[3] after living with metastatic breast cancer for 15 years, and her ashes were buried on the eastern side of Highgate Cemetery.[1]

Awards and honours

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Bibliography

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  • Every Light in the House Burnin′ (1994). Headline Publishing, ISBN 9780747211778.
  • Never Far from Nowhere (1996). Headline, ISBN 9780747252139.
  • Fruit of the Lemon (1999). Review Publishing, ISBN 9780747273479.
  • Small Island (2004). Review Publishing, ISBN 9780755307500.
  • The Long Song (2010). Headline Publishing, ISBN 9780755383320.
  • Six Stories and an Essay (2014). Tinder Press, ISBN 9781472222671.

Further reading

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References

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  1. ^ a b c d e f g "Obituary: Andrea Levy". BBC News. 15 February 2019. Retrieved 19 February 2019.
  2. ^ a b c d Lea, Richard (15 February 2019). "Andrea Levy, chronicler of the Windrush generation, dies aged 62". The Guardian. Retrieved 15 February 2019.
  3. ^ a b Innes, Lyn (15 February 2019). "Andrea Levy obituary". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 18 February 2019.
  4. ^ a b Levy, Andrea (19 February 2000). "This is my England". The Guardian. Retrieved 19 February 2019.
  5. ^ Younge, Gary (30 January 2010). "'I started to realise what fiction could be. And I thought, wow! You can take on the world' – Andrea Levy interview". The Guardian. Retrieved 19 February 2019.
  6. ^ a b c d Salandy-Brown, Marina (November/December 2004). "Andrea Levy: 'This was not a small story'". Caribbean Beat. Issue 70. Retrieved 15 December 2023.
  7. ^ "Novel on J' can immigrants wins second literary prize". The Gleaner. Kingston, Jamaica. Associated Press. 27 January 2005. p. 16. Retrieved 15 February 2019 – via Newspaperarchive.com. Open access icon
  8. ^ "The Eloquent Voice of a Windrush Child". Evening Standard. 19 December 2018. Retrieved 15 February 2019 – via EBSCOhost.
  9. ^ "Tribute to Andrea Levy, 1956–2019". Tribute to Andrea Levy, 1956–2019. Retrieved 25 August 2022.
  10. ^ a b c d Allardice, Lisa (21 January 2005). "Profile: Andrea Levy". The Guardian.
  11. ^ Scurr, Ruth (4 December 2014). "Andrea Levy's islands". The Times Literary Supplement. Archived from the original on 23 February 2015.
  12. ^ a b c d e Prasad, Raekha (4 March 1999). "Two sides to every story". The Guardian.
  13. ^ Busby, Margaret. "Andrea Levy remembered". The Royal Society of Literature. Retrieved 31 March 2021.
  14. ^ a b Batson-Savage, Tanya (29 May 2005). "Late start, good results for Andrea Levy". The Gleaner. Kingston, Jamaica. p. 58. Retrieved 15 February 2019 – via Newspaperarchive.com. Open access icon
  15. ^ "Interview with Andrea Levy". City Lit. 30 July 2010. Archived from the original on 10 April 2014.
  16. ^ a b Hickman, Christie (6 February 2004). "Andrea Levy: Under the skin of history". The Independent. London. Retrieved 15 December 2023.
  17. ^ "Lazy days of summer reading". Independent on Sunday. 2 July 1995. Archived from the original on 17 February 2019.
  18. ^ a b Stade, George; Karbiener, Karen (12 May 2010). Encyclopedia of British Writers, 1800 to the Present. Infobase Publishing. p. 297. ISBN 978-1-4381-1689-1.
  19. ^ Iweala, Uzodinma (11 February 2007). "Colonial Castoff". The New York Times. Retrieved 15 February 2019.
  20. ^ Phillips, Mike (14 February 2004). "Roots manoeuvre". The Guardian.
  21. ^ Ezard, John (4 October 2005). "Small Island novel wins biggest Orange prize". The Guardian. Retrieved 15 February 2019.
  22. ^ a b c "Author Levy wins best of the best". BBC News. 3 October 2005. Retrieved 15 February 2019.
  23. ^ Dennis, Tony (11 December 2009). "Small Island is a missed opportunity". The Guardian. Retrieved 15 February 2019.
  24. ^ "Small Island 2019". National Theatre. Archived from the original on 30 October 2020.
  25. ^ "Small Island". National Theatre. Archived from the original on 8 October 2022. Retrieved 25 August 2022.
  26. ^ Flood, Alison (20 June 2011). "Andrea Levy wins Walter Scott prize". The Guardian. Retrieved 15 February 2019.
  27. ^ a b "The Long Song". The Man Booker Prizes. 19 February 2010. Retrieved 19 August 2021.
  28. ^ Kyte, Holly (27 January 2010). "The Long Song by Andrea Levy: review". The Telegraph.
  29. ^ Kellaway, Kate (7 February 2010). "The Long Song by Andrea Levy". The Observer.
  30. ^ Carr, Flora (20 December 2018). "When is The Long Song on TV? Who's in the cast and what's it about?". Radio Times.
  31. ^ Mangan, Lucy (18 December 2018). "The Long Song review – a sharp, painful look at the last days of slavery". The Guardian. Retrieved 15 February 2019.
  32. ^ Dolan, Chris (15 November 2014). "Andrea Levy: Six Stories And An Essay (Tinder Press)". Herald Scotland.
  33. ^ Guest, Katy (22 November 2014). "Six Stories & an Essay by Andrea Levy: This is a slight collection, but full of important insights". The Independent. Archived from the original on 23 February 2015. Retrieved 15 February 2019.
  34. ^ Busby, Margaret (9 March 2019). "From Ayòbámi Adébáyò to Zadie Smith: meet the New Daughters of Africa". The Guardian.
  35. ^ Gulliver, John (15 March 2019). "Africa's 'new daughters' celebrated in a new anthology". Camden New Journal.
  36. ^ Greer, Bonnie (21 February 2019), "Andrea Levy – An immortal British bard", The New European.
  37. ^ Chandler, Mark (15 February 2019). "Small Island author Andrea Levy dies, aged 62". The Bookseller. Retrieved 31 March 2021.
  38. ^ "Imagine...Andrea Levy: Her Island Story". BBC One. 2018. Retrieved 17 February 2019.
  39. ^ "BBC Radio 4 – Archive on 4, Andrea Levy: In her own words". BBC. Retrieved 25 August 2022.
  40. ^ Younge, Gary (5 February 2020). "Andrea Levy, my brilliant friend". New Statesman. Retrieved 25 August 2022.
  41. ^ "Complete Archive of award-winning novelist Andrea Levy (1956 – 2019) acquired for the nation". www.bl.uk. British Library. 6 February 2020. Retrieved 25 August 2022.
  42. ^ Brown, Mark (6 February 2020). "Andrea Levy's literary archive acquired by British Library". The Guardian. Retrieved 25 August 2022.
  43. ^ Paskett, Zoe (6 February 2020). "British Library acquires Small Island novelist Andrea Levy's archive". Evening Standard. Retrieved 25 August 2022.
  44. ^ Motune, Vic (10 February 2020). "Windrush writer Andrea Levy's literary archive acquired by British Library". Voice Online. Retrieved 25 August 2022.
  45. ^ Thorpe, Vanessa (2 July 2023). "Andrea Levy's notes on Mary Seacole brought to light by IT experts". The Guardian.
  46. ^ "Author Andrea Levy celebrated with Islington Heritage Plaque". Islington Council News. 17 March 2020. Retrieved 17 March 2020.
  47. ^ Gelder, Sam (17 March 2020). "Life and work of award-winning Highbury author Andrea Levy celebrated with plaque at her childhood home". Islington Gazette. Retrieved 15 December 2023.
  48. ^ Boyce, Milton (17 March 2020). "Author Andrea Levy celebrated with Islington Heritage Plaque". The Voice.
  49. ^ Flood, Alison (30 November 2020). "Royal Society of Literature reveals historic changes to improve diversity". The Guardian.
  50. ^ Francis, Alannah (30 November 2020). "Andrea Levy becomes first writer of colour to have pen added to Royal Society of Literature collection". The Voice.
  51. ^ Lawless, Jill (9 July 2005). "'Marginal' to mainstream". The Gazette. Montreal, Canada. Associated Press. p. 114. Retrieved 15 February 2019 – via Newspapers.com. Open access icon
  52. ^ "Andrea Levy". Royal Society of Literature. Archived from the original on 8 February 2019. Retrieved 25 August 2022.
  53. ^ "Alumni and Fellows". School of English and Drama | Queen Mary University of London.
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