Brenda, Lady Maddox ( Murphy; February 24, 1932 – June 16, 2019)[ was an American writer and biographer, who spent most of her adult life living and working in the UK, from 1959 until her death.]
Education and early life
Born Brenda Murphy in Bridgewater, Massachusetts in 1932, she graduated from Harvard University (class of 1953) with a degree in English literature.[ Article in The Washington Post] She also studied at the London School of Economics.
Career
She was a book reviewer for The Observer, The Times, New Statesman, The New York Times, and The Washington Post, and regularly contributed to BBC Radio 4 as a critic and commentator. Her biographies of Elizabeth Taylor, D. H. Lawrence, Nora Barnacle, W. B. Yeats and Rosalind Franklin[ NPR: Rosalind Franklin: Dark Lady of DNA – an audio interview] have been widely acclaimed. She received the Los Angeles Times Biography Award, the Silver PEN Award, the French Prix du Meilleur Livre Etranger, and the Whitbread Biography Prize.
Maddox lived in London and spent time at her cottage near Brecon, Wales where she and her husband, John Maddox (d. 2009), were actively involved within the local community. She was vice-president of the Hay Festival, a member of the Editorial Board of British Journalism Review, and a past chairman of the Broadcasting Press Guild. Maddox had two children and two stepchildren.
Her best-known biography, that of James Joyce's wife Nora Barnacle, was made into a 2000 movie, Nora, starring Susan Lynch in the title role and Ewan McGregor as Joyce.
Her biography of the scientist James Watson was published in 2017.[Maddox, Brenda, James Watson, London: Bloomsbury, 2017; New York: Harper, 2018.]
Awards and honours
Maddox was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature (FRSL) in 1999.
Bibliography
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Beyond Babel: New Directions in Communications (London: Andre Deutsch, 1972)
[Beyond Babel: New Directions in Communications London: The Trinity Press, 1972; ]
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The Half-Parent: Living with Other People's Children (London: Andre Deutsch, 1975)
[ The Half-Parent: Living with Other People's Children London: Andre Deutsch, 1975; ]
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Who's Afraid of Elizabeth Taylor? A Myth of Our Time (London: Granada, 1977)
[Who's Afraid of Elizabeth Taylor? A Myth of Our Time New York: M. Evans & Co., 1977; ]
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Nora: A Biography of Nora Joyce (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1988); also published as Nora: The Real Life of Molly Bloom (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1988)
[ Nora: A Biography of Nora Joyce also published as Nora: The Real Life of Molly Bloom (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1988); , ]
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D. H. Lawrence: The Story of a Marriage,
[ D. H. Lawrence: The Story of a Marriage (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1994); , ] UK edition: The Married Man: A Life of D. H. Lawrence (London: Sinclair-Stevenson, 1994)
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Yeats's Ghosts: The Secret Life of W. B. Yeats
[ Yeats's Ghosts: The Secret Life of W.B. Yeats (New York: HarperCollins, 1999); ]
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Rosalind Franklin: The Dark Lady of DNA
[ (New York: HarperCollins, 2002); , ]
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"Mother of DNA"
["Mother of DNA" New Humanist, 117 (2002): 3.]
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James Watson (London: Bloomsbury, 2017); (New York: Harper, 2018)
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"The woman who cracked the BBC's glass ceiling"
[ "The woman who cracked the BBC's glass ceiling", British Journalism Review. 13: 2 (2003): 69–72.]
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Maggie: The First Lady
[ Maggie: The First Lady (London: Coronet, 2004); , ]
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"The whole world in his hand" The Times, May 27, 2006
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George Eliot: Novelist, Lover, Wife
[ George Eliot: Novelist, Lover, Wife (London: HarperPress, 2009); also published in the USA as George Eliot in Love (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010)]
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Reading the Rocks: How Victorian Geologists Discovered the Secret of Life
[ Reading the Rocks: How Victorian Geologists Discovered the Secret of Life (London: Bloomsbury, 2017); ]
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Freud's Wizard: The Enigma of Ernest Jones
[ Freud's Wizard: The Enigma of Ernest Jones, also published as Freud's Wizard: Ernest Jones and the Transformation of Psychoanalysis (London: John Murray, 2006)]
Da Capo Press, 2007
Personal life
Brenda met John Maddox, then a science correspondent for The Guardian, while visiting Europe in 1958. They married in 1960, and settled in London, where she raised two stepchildren and had three more children of her own.
