Portraits in Fiction

First edition. 12mo. Pp. ix, 101; 24 col. & 13 b/w plates, index. Black cloth, lettered in gilt to spine; black endpapers.

Signed by Author to title page.

Based upon the Heywood Hill Annual Lecture, delivered at the National Portrait Gallery, London, in 2000. A.S. Byatt delves into the complex relationship between portraits and characters; her authors range from Henry James to Iris Murdoch, her artists from Holbein to Botticelli, Manet to the present day.

"She is, as ever, witty and acute in describing imagined paintings, and relating them to real painters and noting the impossible gulf between a portrait in dried oil pigment and one in words... Byatt is always worth reading... beautifully illustrated." –Daily Telegraph