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Dorothy Dunnett |
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Dorothy Dunnett was the author of two historical series, the six-volume Lymond Chronicles and The House of Niccolo, the last volume of which, Gemini, was published in June 2000. She was also the author of a bestselling epic novel about Macbeth, King Hereafter, and a series of contemporary thrillers.
Since the publication of her first book, The Game of Kings, in 1961, Dorothy Dunnett’s work inspired the most fervent discussion, speculation and comment from every continent in the world. She had a huge international following, a global magazine and several international gatherings, which brought readers together to celebrate her charismatic characters, her scholarship, and her storytelling. She was a talented historian and a compelling writer who will be sorely missed by all who knew her.
Dorothy Dunnett was a trustee of the National Library of Scotland, a Board Member of the Edinburgh Book Festival and a non-executive Director of Scottish Television. In 1992 she was awarded an OBE for her services to literature. Dorothy Dunnett passed away in November 2001, in Edinburgh.
Praise for Dorothy Dunnett
'An historical novelist extraordinaire ... the best writer in the genre since Sir Walter Scott' Sunday Times
'The finest living writer of historical fiction'
Washington Post
'If anyone can convey the dynastic concerns of fifteenth-century politicians, and the opulence of their courts, it is Dorothy Dunnett'
Mail on Sunday
'Dorothy Dunnett's novels are as different from the general run of historical fiction as Renaissance paintings are from those of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. They are intensely vigorous and detailed, and without trace of sentimentality . . . a generous feast for greedy enthusiasts'
Daily Telegraph
'Dorothy Dunnett takes readers with her into a fabulous past, using suspense and high adventure'
Sunday Telegraph
'The excitement of Mrs Dunnett's story-telling runs hand-in-hand with the erudition of her research through a high adventure'
The Times
Penguin publish the first Dorothy Dunnett Companion, a lovingly assembled, essential A-Z companion to Dorothy Dunnett's Lymond Chronicles and the first five novels in the House of Niccolo series.
Historian Elspeth Morrison has recreated the author's original research, documenting her myriad sources and literary references, making this an easy to use reference guide and one which richly illuminates the intricacies of the complex and far-flung Renaissance world.
The second Dorothy Dunnett Companion acts primarily as a companion to the last three novels in the House of Niccolo series. It is also a comprehensive and fascinating sourcebook where historical figures and events are fleshed out and subtle allusions and origins are explained.
You can visit the Dorothy Dunnett Readers' Association website at www.ddra.org
Dorothy Dunnett told penguin.co.uk what it felt like to finish the Niccolo series.
What's it like, coming to the climax of the Niccolo series?
Like finishing a long, busy holiday and immediately plunging into the next one. First, in the sense that Gemini didn't just get itself written and published and stop - instead it pushed wide the door on all the arguments that have been going on since the two series began, and which are about to spread and intensify now the paperback is coming on sale. I won't say I'm the referee, but I do enjoy watching the fighting. I even enjoy trying occasionally to remember what the correct answers are, ie, why I wrote what, and exactly when. Its quite a sobering exercise, to set oneself to remember what one intended to do forty years ago. I certainly meant to have two sons, but I can't remember planning to write 23 books. That was an accident.
It may not be the last one, either. For secondly, the big question now is, what next?
Not a series. I plan to live for ever, but don't intend to leave the denouement of the next batch of books on a piece of paper (the parrot did it) along with my will.
So, an eighth and last Johnson Johnson mystery? The facts and photographs behind King Hereafter? A one-off family novel about Italian painting?
It was solved for me. Elspeth Morrison's Dorothy Dunnett Companion, being reprinted this year, is to have a volume 2 for next spring, full of poems, allusions, translations and historical essays dealing not only with the last Niccolo novels, but the early ones right back to Lymond. That's the holiday, therefore. I'm not writing a novel. I'm trying to remember, when Elspeth asks me, what my sources were, what my thinking was, and whether second verses were left out because they were too long, or too rude. We are, fortunately, entirely in accord about what is beautiful, and what is (on occasion) healthily vulgar. So you can see that it is a holiday, in the best sense, and it is busy, and the only question now is, What do I do when this finishes?
