Salley Vickers (born 1948) is a British novelist whose works include ''Miss Garnet's Angel'', ''Mr. Golightly's Holiday'', ''The Other Side of You'' and ''Where Three Roads Meet'', a retelling of the Oedipus myth to
Sigmund Freud
Sigmund Freud ( , ; born Sigismund Schlomo Freud; 6 May 1856 – 23 September 1939) was an Austrian neurologist and the founder of psychoanalysis, a clinical method for evaluating and treating psychopathology, pathologies explained as originatin ...
in the last months of his life. She also writes poetry.
Family, early life and education
Vickers was born in
Liverpool
Liverpool is a City status in the United Kingdom, city and metropolitan borough in Merseyside, England. With a population of in 2019, it is the List of English districts by population, 10th largest English district by population and its E ...
. Her year of birth was thought to be 1948, but an article about her in April 2020 gave her age as 70, which suggests she was born in 1949 or 1950. However, she mentions in a discussion on the 'Confessions' podcast with
Giles Fraser
Giles Anthony Fraser (born 27 November 1964)J. O. N. Vickers, a trades union leader, were both members of the
Communist Party of Great Britain
The Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) was the largest communist organisation in Britain and was founded in 1920 through a merger of several smaller Marxist groups. Many miners joined the CPGB in the 1926 general strike. In 1930, the CPGB ...
until 1956. They were friends of
J. B. S. Haldane
John Burdon Sanderson Haldane (; 5 November 18921 December 1964), nicknamed "Jack" or "JBS", was a British-Indian scientist who worked in physiology, genetics, evolutionary biology, and mathematics. With innovative use of statistics in biolog ...
, and
T. H. White
Terence Hanbury "Tim" White (29 May 1906 – 17 January 1964) was an English writer best known for his Arthurian novels, published together in 1958 as '' The Once and Future King''. One of his most memorable is the first of the series, '' The S ...
had taught her father English at school.
Her father was a committed supporter of Irish republicanism, and her first name 'Salley' is spelled with an 'e' because it is the Irish for '
willow
Willows, also called sallows and osiers, from the genus ''Salix'', comprise around 400 speciesMabberley, D.J. 1997. The Plant Book, Cambridge University Press #2: Cambridge. of typically deciduous trees and shrubs, found primarily on moist ...
' (cognate with Latin: salix, salicis), as in the
W B Yeats
William Butler Yeats (13 June 186528 January 1939) was an Irish poet, dramatist, writer and one of the foremost figures of 20th-century literature. He was a driving force behind the Irish Literary Revival and became a pillar of the Irish liter ...
poem, " Down by the Salley Gardens", a favourite of her parents.
She was brought up in Barleston Hall, Stoke-on-Trent, and in Chiswick where she attended Strand-on-the Green primary school, which she acknowledges as a first-rate state school with superb teachers. She won a state scholarship to
St Paul's Girls' School
St Paul's Girls' School is an independent day school for girls, aged 11 to 18, located in Brook Green, Hammersmith, in West London, England.
History
St Paul's Girls' School was founded by the Worshipful Company of Mercers in 1904, using part ...
, which caused her father some ideological consternation but her mother was supportive. Whilst at St Paul's, however, her father encouraged her to work to ensure that she experienced working life and society very different from that of her more affluent school peers.
Salley went on to read English Literature at
Newnham College, Cambridge
Newnham College is a women's constituent college of the University of Cambridge.
The college was founded in 1871 by a group organising Lectures for Ladies, members of which included philosopher Henry Sidgwick and suffragist campaigner Millicent ...
.
Teaching
Following university she taught children with special needs. She also taught English literature at
Stanford
Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is consider ...
,
Oxford
Oxford () is a city in England. It is the county town and only city of Oxfordshire. In 2020, its population was estimated at 151,584. It is north-west of London, south-east of Birmingham and north-east of Bristol. The city is home to the Un ...
and the
Open University
The Open University (OU) is a British Public university, public research university and the largest university in the United Kingdom by List of universities in the United Kingdom by enrolment, number of students. The majority of the OU's underg ...
, specialising in Shakespeare, the 19th-century novel and 20th-century poetry. She was also a
WEA
The Wea were a Miami-Illinois-speaking Native American tribe originally located in western Indiana. Historically, they were described as either being closely related to the Miami Tribe or a sub-tribe of Miami.
Today, the descendants of the W ...
and further education tutor for adult education classes. During 2012–13 she was a
Royal Literary Fund The Royal Literary Fund (RLF) is a benevolent fund that gives assistance to published British writers in financial difficulties. Founded in 1790, and granted a royal charter in 1818, the Fund has helped an extensive roll of authors through its long ...
fellow of her alma mater, Newnham College, Cambridge.
Psychotherapy
After her initial teaching career, she retrained as a Jungian analytical psychotherapist, subsequently working in the
NHS
The National Health Service (NHS) is the umbrella term for the publicly funded healthcare systems of the United Kingdom (UK). Since 1948, they have been funded out of general taxation. There are three systems which are referred to using the " ...
. She specialised in helping people who were creatively blocked. She gave up her
psychoanalytic
PsychoanalysisFrom Greek: + . is a set of theories and therapeutic techniques"What is psychoanalysis? Of course, one is supposed to answer that it is many things — a theory, a research method, a therapy, a body of knowledge. In what might be ...
work in 2002 because she found "seeing patients" was incompatible with writing novels, although she still lectures on the connections between literature and
psychology
Psychology is the scientific study of mind and behavior. Psychology includes the study of conscious and unconscious phenomena, including feelings and thoughts. It is an academic discipline of immense scope, crossing the boundaries betwe ...
.
Writing
In 2000 her first novel, ''Miss Garnet's Angel'', was published to word-of-mouth acclaim, and she subsequently became a full-time writer. She widely contributes to newspaper and magazines, and to the BBC.
In 2002, she was a judge for the
Booker Prize
The Booker Prize, formerly known as the Booker Prize for Fiction (1969–2001) and the Man Booker Prize (2002–2019), is a literary prize awarded each year for the best novel written in English and published in the United Kingdom or Ireland. ...
for Fiction.
In 2011 she contributed a short story, "Why Willows Weep", to an anthology supporting The Woodland Trust. The anthology had helped the Trust plant approximately 50,000 trees. She has also published two volumes of short stories, 'Aphrodite's Hat' and 'The Boy Who Could See Death.'
Recent novels include ''The Cleaner of Chartres'' (2012), which considers the plight of unmarried mothers whose children are taken from them; ''Cousins'' (2016), which explores the moral dilemmas of assisted suicide, a cause to which Vickers has put her name; ''The Librarian'' (2018), which includes biographical information in the author's notes; ''Grandmothers'' (2019), which is based on her work as a psychotherapist and which explores intergenerational relationships; and ''The Gardener'', which was published in November 2021.
In ''The Librarian'', Vickers describes
Sylvia Townsend Warner
Sylvia Nora Townsend Warner (6 December 1893 – 1 May 1978) was an English novelist, poet and musicologist, known for works such as '' Lolly Willowes'', '' The Corner That Held Them'', and '' Kingdoms of Elfin''.
Life
Sylvia Townsend Warner ...
as one of her role models.
Personal life
She has two sons from her marriage with Martin Brown. In 2002, her brief second marriage to the Irish writer and broadcaster
Frank Delaney
Frank Delaney (24 October 1942 – 21 February 2017) was an Irish novelist, journalist and broadcaster. He was the author of ''The New York Times'' best-seller ''Ireland'', Op-Ed Contributor: Holy Rollers and Papal Perfectas">The New York Times ...
ended, and was dissolved "just as her career as an author took off". She lives in
Notting Hill
Notting Hill is a district of West London, England, in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea. Notting Hill is known for being a cosmopolitan and multicultural neighbourhood, hosting the annual Notting Hill Carnival and Portobello Roa ...
.
In April 2020 she wrote that she hoped to be infected by the
COVID-19 virus
Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS‑CoV‑2) is a strain of coronavirus that causes COVID-19 (coronavirus disease 2019), the respiratory illness responsible for the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. The virus previously had a ...
'in order to be granted the immunity to return to the world and lend a hand'. She said she had a much younger physiological age than her actual age of 70, with low cholesterol and good fitness.
Fiction
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* (part of the
Canongate Myth Series
The ''Canongate Myth Series'' is a series of novellas published by the independent Scottish publisher Canongate Books, in which ancient myths from various cultures are reimagined and rewritten. The project was conceived in 1999 by Jamie Byng, own ...
)
*
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* (reprinted from the collection ''Aphrodite's Hat'')
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A projected non-fiction book about The Book of Common Prayer and entitled ''Sweet and Comfortable Words'' was never published.
Joan Bakewell
Joan Dawson Bakewell, Baroness Bakewell, (''née'' Rowlands; born 16 April 1933), is an English journalist, television presenter and Labour Party peer. Baroness Bakewell is president of Birkbeck, University of London; she is also an author ...
on
BBC Radio 3
BBC Radio 3 is a British national radio station owned and operated by the BBC. It replaced the BBC Third Programme in 1967 and broadcasts classical music and opera, with jazz, world music, drama, culture and the arts also featuring. The st ...
BBC Radio 4
BBC Radio 4 is a British national radio station owned and operated by the BBC that replaced the BBC Home Service in 1967. It broadcasts a wide variety of Talk radio, spoken-word programmes, including news, drama, comedy, science and history fro ...