| 1 | Name: | Ms. Claire Tomalin | |
| Year Elected: | 2012 | ||
| Class: | 3. Social Sciences | ||
| Subdivision: | 303. History Since 1715 | ||
| Residency: | International | ||
| Living? : | Living | ||
| Birth Date: | 1933 | ||
Claire Tomalin, nee Delavenay, was born in 1933 in London of a French father and an English mother, studied at Cambridge, worked in publishing and journalism as literary editor of the New Statesman, then the Sunday Times, while bringing up her children. In 1974 she published her first book The Life and Death of Mary Wollstonecraft, which won the Whitbread First Book Prize. Since then she has researched and written Shelley and His World, 1980; Katherine Mansfield: A Secret Life, 1987; The Invisible Woman: the story of Nelly Ternan and Charles Dickens, 1991 [NCR, Hawthornden, James Tait Black prizes - now being filmed with Ralph Fiennes]; Mrs Jordan's Profession, 1994; Jane Austen: A Life, 1997; Samuel Pepys: the Unequalled Self, 2002 [Whitbread biography and Book of the Year prizes, Pepys Society Prize, Rose Crawshay Prize]. Thomas Hardy: The Time-Torn Man appeared in 2006, after which she made a television film about Hardy, and published a selection of Hardy’s poems. Her Charles Dickens: A Life was published in 2011. She organized two exhibitions, about the Regency actress Mrs. Jordan at Kenwood in 1995, and about Mary Wollstonecraft and Mary Shelley in 1997. She also edited and introduced Mary Shelley’s story for children, Maurice. A collection of her reviews, Several Strangers, appeared in 1999. She has served on the Committee of the London Library and as a Trustee of the National Portrait Gallery and the Wordsworth Trust. She is a Vice-President of the Royal Literary Fund, of the Royal Society of Literature and of English PEN. She enjoys walking, gardening, travelling, being with her children and grandchildren, and listening to classical music and opera. She lives in London and is married to the playwright and novelist Michael Frayn. | |||