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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 she does have a blog, so here are some recent posts imported from her 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?”

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Diana Athill’s books

Average rating: 3.84 · 6,816 ratings · 1,209 reviews · 32 distinct works • Similar authors

	Somewhere Towards the End 3.72 avg rating — 2,137 ratings — published 2008 — 18 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 — 1,027 ratings — published 2000 — 12 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 3.87 avg rating — 597 ratings — published 1962 — 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
	Alive, Alive Oh!: And Other Things That Matter 3.85 avg rating — 817 ratings — published 2016 — 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
	A Florence Diary 3.60 avg rating — 258 ratings — published 2016 — 6 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 3.87 avg rating — 212 ratings — published 2002 — 3 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 3.84 avg rating — 193 ratings — published 1986 — 10 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 3.66 avg rating — 140 ratings — published 1962 — 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
	Life Class: The Selected Memoirs 4.29 avg rating — 112 ratings — published 2009 — 7 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 3.75 avg rating — 109 ratings — published 1967 — 7 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

21 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

10 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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Topics Mentioning This Author

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The Seasonal Read...: Winter Challenge 2010-2011 Completed Tasks (do not delete any posts)	2589	1007	Feb 28, 2011 09:05PM
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The Seasonal Read...: Summer Challenge 2012: Completed Tasks - DO NOT DELETE ANY POSTS IN THIS TOPIC	2662	866	Aug 31, 2012 09:02PM
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The Seasonal Read...: Completed Tasks: PLEASE DO NOT DELETE ANY POST IN THIS THREAD	3089	653	Feb 28, 2017 09:01PM
Book Nook Cafe: What I read- September 2017	31	41	Oct 24, 2017 07:46AM

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