British Novelist Dame Beryl Bainbridge died at the age of 75 today after battling cancer, her literary agent said.
Liverpool-born Bainbridge, who was nominated for the Man Booker prize on five occasions and won the Whitbread award for fiction twice, died at a London hospital early today
Her publicist Susan de Soissons of Little Brown Company said: "she was one of the huge doyennes of literature and everyone adored her."
Her bestsellers include An Awfully Big Adventure, Master Georgie and the Dressmaker.
Every Man for Himself, set on the sinking Titanic, shot her into the media spotlight when it became swept up in the publicity surrounding the hit Hollywood film.
In 2008, she featured in a London Times newspaper list of the 50 greatest British writers since 1945. She was made a dame in 2000.
Sir Michael Holroyd, Dame Beryl?s biographer, said she should be remembered as one of the greats of British literature. He said although she did not win the Booker Prize, she did win the David Cohen Prize, which puts her alongside literary heavyweights like Seamus Heaney, Harold Pinter and VS Naipaul, who also won Nobel prizes.
He said Dame Beryl was working on her latest book right up to the time her cancer took hold. ?She told me she had got to page 35 in her latest novel. She had got all her characters into a taxi, but didn?t know to get them out.?
Agencies