Emma Tennant

Tennant was of Scottish extraction, the daughter of Christopher Grey Tennant, 2nd Baron Glenconner, and Elizabeth, Lady Glenconner (née Powell).[2] She remembered her father as a mix of rage and benevolence. She was the niece of Edward Wyndham Tennant and Stephen Tennant, and the half-sister of Colin Tennant, later the third Baron Glenconner, from her father's first marriage.

Born in London, she spent the World War II years at the family's faux Gothic mansion The Glen in Peeblesshire.[3] Her parents were regularly absent, while The Glen "was the strangest possible place. I knew no other world at all until I was nine".[4] The family then resettled in London. Tennant was educated at St Paul's Girls' School, but left when she was 15. She spent some time at an Oxford finishing school, studying languages and the history of art, and a year in Paris at The Louvre.[3]

Tennant worked as a travel writer for Queen magazine and an editor for Vogue.[3] Her first novel, The Colour of Rain, was published under a pseudonym when she was 26. Submitted to the Spanish Prix Formentor, the response of the chair of the judges, the Italian novelist Alberto Moravia meant that she suffered writer's block for some years afterwards. According to Tennant, he "tossed my book into a wastepaper basket and declared, 'This book stands for the decadence of British contemporary culture'."[3][4] It was not until 1973 that her second novel, The Time of the Crack, was first published. Between 1975 and 1979, she edited a literary magazine, Bananas, which helped launch the careers of several young novelists. She was the editor the Viking series Lives of Modern Women.[5]

A large number of books by Tennant followed: thrillers, children's books, fantasies, and several revisionist takes on classic novels, including a sequel to Pride and Prejudice called Pemberley. In later years, she began to treat her own life in such books as Girlitude and Burnt Diaries (both published in 1999), the second of which details her affair with Ted Hughes.[3] "He was so odd – to put it mildly", she wrote.[4] The French Dancer's Bastard, which recounts the life of Adele, the daughter of Mr Rochester from Jane Eyre, was published in October 2006. The Autobiography of the Queen, written with Hilary Bailey, was published in October 2007.

Tennant was married four times, including to the journalist and author Christopher Booker between 1963 and 1968 and the political writer Alexander Cockburn between 13 December 1968 and 1973. She had one son and two daughters. Her son, from her first marriage, is the author Matthew Yorke. Her older daughter Daisy, from her marriage to Cockburn, teaches the Alexander technique. Her younger daughter Rose Dempsey, from a relationship with publisher Michael Dempsey, works for the Serpentine Galleries.[4] A lifelong supporter of the Labour Party, she married in April 2008 her partner of 33 years, Tim Owens, saying it was not, or not only for tax policies introduced by the government of Gordon Brown.[6]

Emma Tennant died on 21 January 2017 in a London hospital from posterior cortical atrophy, a form of Alzheimer's disease.[3][7]

• Literary Encyclopedia article on Emma Tennant
• Canongate Books biography of Emma Tennant
• Emma Tennant bibliography
• Lesley McDowell, "Two sides to every story – Emma Tennant Interview", The Scotsman, 31 July 2008.
• Dee O'Connell, This much I know – Emma Tennant, The Observer, 3 November 2002.
• David Smith, "How Gordon got Emma to the altar...33 years late", The Observer, 20 April 2008.
• Stuart A. Rose Manuscript, Archive, and Rare Book Library, Emory University: Emma Tennant collection, 1973-1998