British novelist Beryl Bainbridge dies at 75

[July 02, 2010]  LONDON (AP) -- The acclaimed British novelist Beryl Bainbridge, an acute and acerbic chronicler of human relationships, has died at the age of 75.

Ed Wilson, of her literary agency Johnson and Alcock, says Bainbridge died in a London hospital early Friday. She had been suffering from cancer.

Bainbridge was born in the port city of Liverpool in northwest England in 1934, and the city's grit informed her books, which blended humor, tragedy and the absurd.

She published more than a dozen novels, including "A Weekend With Claud," "The Bottle Factory Outing" and "Injury Time."

Several drew on Bainbridge's own experiences. Her early career as an actress in provincial theater provided the setting for "An Awfully Big Adventure," published in 1989 and made into a 1995 movie starring Alan Rickman and Hugh Grant.

As time went by, she increasingly turned to historical settings. "Every Man for Himself" was set aboard the Titanic and "Master Georgie" during in the Crimean War, while "According to Queeney" looked at 18th-century lexicographer Samuel Johnson. "Young Adolf" imagined the aspiring artist Hitler in Liverpool before World War I, to comic and disturbing effect.

"Beryl had an absolutely original voice: she was a serious comedian, all of whose novels ended tragically," writer Michael Holroyd told The Guardian newspaper.

Bainbridge was a five-time finalist for the Booker Prize, and twice won the Whitbread literary prize.

She was made a dame, the female equivalent of a knight, by Queen Elizabeth II in 2000.

Details of survivors and funeral plans were not immediately available.

[Associated Press; By JILL LAWLESS]

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