Lynne Reid Banks. In Memoriam

The British author Lynne Reid Banks (1929-2024) passed away a few days ago. She was best known for her debut novel The L-Shaped Room (1960) and the children's novel The Indian in the Cupboard (1980). Both of these works were adapted into films and spawned several sequels. However, she wrote many more novels for children, young adults, and adults.

Among her works, two novels are of particular interest to readers of BrontëBlog:

• Dark Quartet: the story of the Brontës (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1976); US ed., 1977 and its sequel
• Path to the Silent Country: Charlotte Brontë's Years of Fame. Delacorte Press. 1977

Let's finish this post with a quote from the preface of Dark Quartet:

So the facts were my stepping - stones, and sometimes, when there were enough of them, my straight path through these four lives. Where there was no solid factual ground, I have felt free to guess, to use my novelist's insight - in a word, to invent. Who has studied this family and not longed to be a fly on the parsonage wall, to watch and listen and find out what really happened, what they said to each other, what they did, what motivated them? But I have not let my imagination run riot. I have kept it harnessed to the truth. For the rest, I offer my answers to some of the mysteries. Let anyone who is not satisfied with these brave the wrath of the curator of the Brontë Museum by digging up the parsonage garden!