HAYCRAFT, Anna (Margaret) 1932–2005

(Alice Thomas Ellis, Anna Margaret Lindholm, Brenda O'Casey)

OBITUARY NOTICE—See index for CA sketch: Born September 9, 1932, in Liverpool, England; died of lung cancer March 8, 2005, in London, England. Author. Often writing under the pen name Alice Thomas Ellis, Haycraft was associated with the Duckworth school of writers whose novels typically featured women characters in a modern British settings. Her devout, conservative Catholic beliefs were fostered when she was eighteen; abruptly quitting the Liverpool School of Art, where she had been a student, she converted to Catholicism and entered the Convent of Notre Dame de Namur in Liverpool. Unfortunately, she was compelled to leave the convent after she suffered a slipped disk. Finding work at a delicatessen, she met her future husband, Colin Haycraft. After they were married, he purchased the Duckworth publishing house, and she helped her husband by becoming the company's fiction editor. Using the Ellis pseudonym, she began writing novels for Duckworth as an outlet for self-expression, the first being The Sin Eater (1977). Many more novels followed, including The Twenty-seventh Kingdom (1982), which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize, The Inn at the Edge of the World (1990), which won a Writers' Guild award for best fiction, and Fairy Tale (1998). Her trilogy of fiction, comprised of The Clothes in the Wardrobe (1987), The Skeleton in the Cupboard (1988), and The Fly in the Ointment (1989), was later compiled into a single volume as The Summer House: A Trilogy (1994); the first book in the trilogy was later adapted as the 1992 film Summer House. Haycraft was also known for her columns expressing her conservative views in the Spectator, Universe, and the Catholic Herald. At one point, she was fired from the Herald for criticizing the archbishop of Liverpool for his ecumenism; she returned to writing for the periodical from 1998 until 2001, however. In addition to her Catholic faith, Haycraft's writing was often distinctive for its humor, which even found its way into her cookbooks, such as Darling, You Shouldn't Have Gone to So Much Trouble (1980), and her love of the Welsh landscape and its history, particularly noticeable in her autobiography, A Welsh Childhood (1990). The author also wrote nonfiction works about religion, society, and domestic life, such as Home Life (1986), Loss of the Good Authority: The Cause of Delinquency (1989, written with Tom Pitt-Aikens), and Serpent on the Rock: A Personal View of Christianity (1994). Her last book was 2000's Valentine's Day, which she edited.

OBITUARIES AND OTHER SOURCES:

BOOKS

Ellis, Alice Thomas, A Welsh Childhood, M. Joseph (London, England), 1990.

PERIODICALS

Independent (London, England), March 10, 2005, p. 35.

Los Angeles Times, March 15, 2005, p. B9.

New York Times, March 12, 2005, p. A27.

Times (London, England), March 10, 2005, p. 67.

Washington Post, March 12, 2005, p. B7.