Audrey Lilian Barker FRSL (13 April 1918 – 21 February 2002) was an English

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

 novelist and short story

Short story

A short story is a work of fiction that is usually written in prose, often in narrative format. This format tends to be more pointed than longer works of fiction, such as novellas and novels. Short story definitions based on length differ somewhat, even among professional writers, in part because...

 writer

Writer

A writer is a person who produces literature, such as novels, short stories, plays, screenplays, poetry, or other literary art. Skilled writers are able to use language to portray ideas and images....

. She was born in St Pauls Cray, Kent

Kent

Kent is a county in southeast England, and is one of the home counties. It borders East Sussex, Surrey and Greater London and has a defined boundary with Essex in the middle of the Thames Estuary. The ceremonial county boundaries of Kent include the shire county of Kent and the unitary borough of...

 and brought up in Beckenham

Beckenham

Beckenham is a town in the London Borough of Bromley, England. It is located 8.4 miles south east of Charing Cross and 1.75 miles west of Bromley town...

. During her lifetime, she published ten collections of short stories and eleven novels, one of which - John Brown's Body - was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 1970. She was also the winner of the inaugural Somerset Maugham Prize in 1947, with her collection of short stories called Innocents.

Novels

• Apology for a Hero (1950)
• A Case Examined (1965)
• The Middling (1967)
• John Brown's Body (1970)
• Source of Embarrassment (1974)
• Heavy Feather (1978)
• Relative Successes (1984)
• The Gooseboy (1987)
• The Woman Who Talked to Herself (1989)
• Zeph (1992)
• The Haunt (1999)

Short Story Collections

• Innocents (1947)
• Novelette, with Other Stories (1951)
• The Joy-Ride and After (1963)
• Lost Upon the Roundabouts (1964)
• Femina Real (1971)
• Life Stories (1981)
• No World of Love (1985)
• Any Excuse for a Party (1991)
• Element of Doubt (1992)
• Seduction (1994)
• Submerged (2002)

External links

• Obituary from The Independent
• Obituary from The Guardian