Ingoldby, Grace 1949–2005

(Colin Gray, Grace Dinah Ingoldby)

OBITUARY NOTICE—See index for CA sketch: Born April 30, 1949, in Winchester, England; died of cancer, December 12, 2005, in London, England. Critic and author. Ingoldby was a literary critic and novelist who later wrote poetry. After being educated at a Belgium convent, she worked as an au pair in Washington, DC, before marrying her first husband, Fred Hart, in 1971. She then moved with him to Belfast, Ireland, where she earned an income reviewing books for such newspapers as the Daily Telegraph and the Manchester (now London) Guardian. Moving back to England in the late 1970s, her marriage ended and she began publishing novels. Among these are Across the Water (1985); Lance Dance with You (1986), which won the Southern Arts Fiction Prize that year; Head of the Corner (1992); Candles and Dark Night (1992); and Bring out Your Dead (1998). She also wrote the nonfiction Out of Call; or, Cry, about Sark (1990). Under the name Colin Gray, she won the London Sunday Times Crime Writer's prize for a short story. After her son died in a fire, Ingoldby turned increasingly to poetry, and many of her verses won prizes. She married again in 1993, to Edward Abelson, and spent many of her remaining years as a writer-in-residence at various institutions, including the Winchester College of Art, the Arvon Foundation, and the Courtauld Institute, while continuing to work as a literary journalist. She was forced to withdraw from the British Antarctic Survey team in 2003 when she learned of her cancer.

OBITUARIES AND OTHER SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Guardian (London, England), December 27, 2005, p. 32.

Times (London, England), February 6, 2006, p. 52.