Brookner, Anita (1928– )

English novelist and art historian. She was Reader at the Courtauld Institute 1977–88, and Slade Professor of Fine Art at Cambridge 1967–68, the first woman to hold the post. Her novel Hotel du Lac (1984) won the Booker Prize.

Her skill in fiction is in the subtle portrayal of hopelessness and lack of vitality in her female characters. Her other novels include A Misalliance (1986), Latecomers (1988), A Closed Eye (1991), Family Romance (1993), A Private View (1994), Altered States (1996), Falling Slowly (1998), Undue Influence (1999), The Next Big Thing (2002), and The Rules of Engagement (2003). Soundings (1997) is a collection of lectures and reviews, and Romanticism and its Discontents (2000) is a historical survey about the romantic hero in writing and painting.