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Shot through with melancholy, Ms. Ellis's novels focus on the small savageries, deep discontents and abiding grief of women's lives. Yet they are also mordantly funny sendups of bourgeois manners. Sometimes, as in the work of
Shirley Jackson, the gothic overlays the domestic, to unsettling effect.
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in London, where she embraced a
Bohemian lifestyle and became known for wearing black. She was working in a coffee shop when she met Colin Haycraft. The couple married in 1956 and eventually had seven children. Their daughter Mary died two days after birth. Their son Joshua spent ten months in a
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was republished in four volumes. All her work was livened by a dry, dark sense of humour. As she put it, "There is no reciprocity. Men love women. Women love children. Children love hamsters. Hamsters don't love anyone".
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She combined a novelist's imagination with an editor's forensic skills, getting immediately to the heart of the problem, with an observation such as, "Lovely characters, darling, but where's the plot?"
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changes in church practices. In one book, she described them as "tide of sewage" and "Protestantized happy-clappy stuff." She was a sharp critic of what she saw as abuses of
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after falling off a roof, dying at age 19 in 1978. Ellis dedicated her poem "The Birds of the Air" to Joshua, with the inscription:
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138:(1977) appeared under the pseudonym Alice Thomas Ellis, which she used in all her later writing. Probably her best-known novel,
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35:(born Ann Margaret Lindholm, 9 September 1932 – 8 March 2005) was an English writer and essayist born in
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In 1995, Ellis's husband died, after which she moved from London to their farmhouse in
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and practice that watered down the faith. She claimed that since the change from the
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List of Ellis' publications, archived from the
University of South Carolina website
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Ellis was born in
Liverpool to John and Alexandra Lindholm. John was half
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Thomas Ellis was educated at Bangor
Grammar School and then entered the
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Many of Ms. Ellis's characters are repellent, and they are meant to be.
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483:"Alice Thomas Ellis Dies at 72; Writer About Spiritual and Mundane"
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attendance in the previous decade. Infuriated by her comments,
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in 2003 and died of it on 8 March 2005, at the age of 72.
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Converts to Roman
Catholicism from atheism or agnosticism
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As a conservative Roman
Catholic, Ellis disliked the
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Darling, you shouldn't have gone to so much trouble
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144:(1985), was adapted for UK television, as was her
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187:. Blackwood and her poet husband,
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566:British people of Finnish descent
335:The Inn at the Edge of the World
101:He who sang and sprang and moved
571:English people of Welsh descent
521:The Royal Society of Literature
480:Fox, Margalit (12 March 2005).
416:"Obituary | Alice Thomas Ellis"
414:Colvin, Clare (10 March 2005).
152:(1982) was shortlisted for the
586:20th-century British novelists
175:Ellis's cookery books include
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261:in 1999. She was treated for
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104:Now, in death, is only loved.
95:All his beauty, wit and grace
315:The Skeleton in the Cupboard
179:(Fontana/Collins, 1977) and
110:Gerald Duckworth and Company
305:The Clothes in the Wardrobe
259:Royal Society of Literature
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293:The Other Side of the Fire
82:In the 1950s she moved to
446:"Alice Thomas Ellis Dies"
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27:English writer, 1932–2005
611:Deaths from lung cancer
596:English Roman Catholics
581:English women novelists
329:Summerhouse Trilogy III
325:The Fly in the Ointment
236:Archbishop of Liverpool
69:Liverpool School of Art
601:Roman Catholic writers
319:Summerhouse Trilogy II
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309:Summerhouse Trilogy I
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51:, and Alexandra half
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185:Caroline Blackwood
183:, co-written with
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71:. A member of the
65:A Welsh Childhood.
33:Alice Thomas Ellis
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383:Fantastic Fiction
134:Her first novel,
16:(Redirected from
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561:2005 deaths
556:1932 births
263:lung cancer
61:North Wales
59:evacuee in
550:Categories
353:Fairy Tale
198:column in
496:0362-4331
460:0190-8286
196:Home Life
162:article,
37:Liverpool
327:, 1990 (
317:, 1988 (
307:, 1987 (
222:feminist
269:Fiction
214:liturgy
156:. In a
84:Chelsea
49:Finnish
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361:, 1999
355:, 1996
343:, 1992
337:, 1990
301:, 1985
295:, 1983
289:, 1982
283:, 1980
277:, 1977
240:church
501:8 May
465:8 May
427:8 May
388:8 May
366:Notes
53:Welsh
503:2023
492:ISSN
467:2023
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429:2023
390:2023
194:Her
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43:Life
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