Sara Maitland Explained

Sara Maitland
Birth Name:Sarah Louise Maitland
Birth Date:1950 2, df=yes
Birth Place:London, United Kingdom
Occupation:Writer of short stories, novelist, amateur theologian
Nationality:British
Period:1978–present
Genre:Nonfiction, fiction, theology, gardening
Subject:Christianity, saints, lives of women, mythology, fairy tales
Notableworks:Daughter of Jerusalem, "True North"/"Far North" (short story), A Big Enough God, A Book of Silence
Awards: (1979) – Daughter of Jerusalem
(nomination, 2009) – A Book of Silence
BBC National Short Story Award (runner up, 2009) – "Moss Witch"

Sara Maitland (born 27 February 1950) is a British writer of religious fantasy. A novelist, she is also known for her short stories. Her work has a magic realist tendency.

Life and career

Sarah (later "Sara") Louise Maitland[1] was born in London as the second of six children of Adam Maitland of Cumstoun House, Kirkcudbright, (a descendant of the judge Thomas Maitland, Lord Dundrennan)[2] and Hope Baillie Maitland (née Fraser-Campbell). Adam Maitland's mother, Cecil Louise, was from the Scottish family of Mackenzie of Portmore descending from Colin Mackenzie of Portmore, friend of Walter Scott.[1] [3] Maitland has described her upper-class London family[4] as "very open and noisy".[5] In her childhood she went to school in a small Wiltshire town[6] and attended St Mary's, a girls' boarding school in Calne, from the age of 12 until her admission to university. Maitland thought this school a terrible place and became very excitable.[7]

Growing up, Maitland developed a wild reputation: in 1966 she scandalised one of her brothers by winning a foot race in a very short cotton dress.[8] On entering Oxford University in 1968 to study English, she became friends with future US President Bill Clinton[9] "and a regular visitor at 46 Leckford Road, a house Clinton shared with Frank Aller, Jana (Jan) Brenning and Strobe Talbott".[10] [11] She suffered from problems of mental disarray and inability to carry out routine tasks.[12] During her college years, Maitland was taken to a mental hospital on several occasions for this reason,[12] but she completed her course and started writing.

She has been absorbed in religion since 1972. From 1972 to 1993 she was married to an Anglican priest, but divorced in 1993 and became a Roman Catholic.[13] In 1995, she worked with Stanley Kubrick on the film A.I. Artificial Intelligence.

She has two adult children: actress Polly Lee and photographer Adam Lee, who took the cover photograph for A Book of Silence.[14] Since her son left college, Maitland has moved towards a solitary and prayerful life[15] in a variety of locations, first of all on the Isle of Skye and ultimately in her present house in Galloway. She says that she wants to avoid most of the comforts of life, especially those that intrude into her quest for silence such as mobile phones, radio, television and even her son.[16] She has described these changes in her life and the experiences leading to them in the autobiographical A Book of Silence. Maitland has taught[17] part-time for Lancaster University's MA in Creative Writing and is a Fellow of St Chad's College, Durham University.

Maitland's 2003 collection of short stories, On Becoming a Fairy Godmother, is a fictional celebration of the menopausal woman, while the title story of 2008's Far North was originally published as "True North" in her first collection Telling Tales and was made into a film of the same title in 2007. The rest of Far North collects dark mythological tales from around the world.

Bibliography

Novels

Short story collections

Non-fiction

As editor

Notes

External links

Notes and References

  1. Genealogies of Kentucky Families- From the Filson Club History Quarterly, Genealogical Publishing Company, 1981, p. 419
  2. Burke's Landed Gentry, 19th edition, vol. 1, The Kingdom of Scotland, ed. Peter Beauclerk Dewar, Burke's Peerage Ltd, 2001, p. 884
  3. Burke's Peerage, Baronetage and Knightage, 107th ed., vol. 1, ed. Charles Mosley, Burke's Peerage Ltd, 2003, p. 1219
  4. News: A Book of Silence, By Sara Maitland . Review . Michele . Roberts . Michèle Roberts . The Independent. London . 14 November 2008 . dead. https://web.archive.org/web/20090611035932/https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/a-book-of-silence-by-sara-maitland-1017106.html . 2009-06-11.
  5. Maitland, Sara; The Swans
  6. Maitland, Sara (editor); Very Heaven: Looking Back at the 1960s; p. 5.
  7. Maitland; Very Heaven; p. 4.
  8. Maitland; Very Heaven; p. 5.
  9. Brenning, Jana
  10. Hoffman, Matthew; "The Bill Clinton We Knew at Oxford: Apart from smoking dope (and not inhaling), what else did he learn over here? College friends share their memories with Matthew Hoffman"; in The Independent, 11 October 1992.
  11. "Clinton's London Affair Just SAX"; in Los Angeles Times, 4 July 1993; p. 24.
  12. https://web.archive.org/web/20090730005450/http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/health-news/is-there-a-link-between-madness-and-creativity-440374.html "Is there a link between madness and creativity?"
  13. Brown, Andrew; "Church Group Reported for Sex Bias", in The Independent, 9 April 1993.
  14. Web site: About Sara. https://archive.today/20120911033809/http://www.saramaitland.com/About_Me.html. dead. 11 September 2012.
  15. News: Stanford . Peter . Sara Maitland: A very unlikely modern hermit . 29 July 2024 . The Independent . 26 October 2008 . https://web.archive.org/web/20100901090610/http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/features/sara-maitland-a-very-unlikely-modern-hermit-970896.html . 1 September 2010.
  16. News: All quiet on the western front. The Scotsman . 6 November 2008. 13 July 2019 . https://web.archive.org/web/20190713102808/https://www.scotsman.com/lifestyle-2-15039/all-quiet-on-the-western-front-1-1300996 .
  17. Web site: Sara Maitland . www.research.lancs.ac.uk . Lancaster University . 29 July 2024 . Formerly at Lancaster University.

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