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 MaitlandGenealogies of Kentucky Families- From the Filson Club History Quarterly, Genealogical Publishing Company, 1981, p. 419 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)Burke's Landed Gentry, 19th edition, vol. 1, The Kingdom of Scotland, ed. Peter Beauclerk Dewar, Burke's Peerage Ltd, 2001, p. 884 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.Burke's Peerage, Baronetage and Knightage, 107th ed., vol. 1, ed. Charles Mosley, Burke's Peerage Ltd, 2003, p. 1219 Maitland has described her upper-class London family as "very open and noisy".Maitland, Sara; The Swans In her childhood she went to school in a small Wiltshire townMaitland, Sara (editor); Very Heaven: Looking Back at the 1960s; p. 5. 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.Maitland; Very Heaven; p. 4.
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.Maitland; Very Heaven; p. 5. On entering Oxford University in 1968 to study English, she became friends with future US President Bill Clinton and a regular visitor at 46 Leckford Road, a house Clinton shared with Frank Aller, David Satter and Strobe Talbott. She suffered from problems of mental disarray and inability to carry out routine tasks. During her university years, Maitland was taken to a mental hospital on several occasions for this reason, 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.Brown, Andrew; "Church Group Reported for Sex Bias", in The Independent, 9 April 1993. In 1995, she worked with Stanley Kubrick on the film A.I. Artificial Intelligence.
She has two adult children. Since her son left college, Maitland has moved towards a solitary and prayerful life 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. She has described these changes in her life and the experiences leading to them in the autobiographical A Book of Silence. Maitland has taught 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 Daughter of Jerusalem, 1978 (winner of Somerset Maugham Award 1979) also published as The Languages of Love Virgin Territory, 1984 Arky Types, 1987 (with Michelene Wandor) Three Times Table, 1991 Home Truths, 1993 published as Ancestral Truths in the United States Hagiographies, 1998 Brittle Joys, 1999
Short story collections Telling Tales, 1983 A Book of Spells, 1987 Women Fly When Men Aren't Watching, 1992 Angel and Me (for Holy Week), 1996 On Becoming A Fairy Godmother, Maia, 2003 Far North & Other Dark Tales, 2008 Moss Witch, 2013
Non-fiction A Map of the New Country: Women and Christianity, 1983 Vesta Tilley, Virago, 1986 A Big-Enough God: Artful Theology, Mowbray, 1994 Virtuous Magic: Women Saints and Their Meanings (with Wendy Mulford), 1998 Novel Thoughts: Religious Fiction in Contemporary Culture, Erasmus Institute, 1999 Awesome God: Creation, Commitment and Joy, SPCK, 2002 The Write Guide (with Martin Goodman), New Writing North, 2007 Stations of the Cross (with Chris Gollon), 2009 A Book of Silence, Granta, 2008 (hardcover); 2009 (paperback) Gossip from the Forest: the Tangled Roots of our Forests and Fairytales (), Granta, 2012 How to Be Alone, in The School of Life series (), Picador, 2014
As editor Very Heaven: Looking Back at the 1960s, 1988 The Rushdie File, 1990 (with Lisa Appignanesi)
Notes
References
External links Archived copy, 30 March 2022
Orlando Project