Brenda, Lady Maddox ( Murphy; February 24, 1932 – June 16, 2019) was an American writer and biographer, who spent most of her adult life living and working in the UK, from 1959 until her death. She is best known for her biographies, including of Nora Barnacle, the wife of James Joyce, and for her semi-autobiographical book, The Half-Parent: Living with Other People's Children.

Education and early life

Born Brenda Murphy in Bridgewater, Massachusetts in 1932, she graduated from Harvard University (class of 1953) with a degree in English literature. She also studied at the London School of Economics.

Career

She was a book reviewer for The Observer, The Times, New Statesman, The New York Times, and The Washington Post, and regularly contributed to BBC Radio 4 as a critic and commentator. Her biographies of Elizabeth Taylor, D.H. Lawrence, Nora Joyce, W. B. Yeats and Rosalind Franklin have been widely acclaimed. She received the Los Angeles Times Biography Award, the Silver PEN Award, the French Prix du Meilleur Livre Etranger, and the Whitbread Biography Prize. Maddox lived in London and spent time at her cottage near Brecon, Wales where she and her husband, Sir John Maddox (d. 2009), were actively involved within the local community. She was vice-president of the Hay-on-Wye Festival of Literature, a member of the Editorial Board of British Journalism Review, and a past chairman of the Broadcasting Press Guild. Maddox had two children and two stepchildren. Her best-known biography, that of James Joyce's wife Nora Barnacle, was made into a 2000 movie, Nora, starring Susan Lynch in the title role and Ewan McGregor as Joyce. Her biography of the scientist James Watson was published in 2017.

Awards and honours

Maddox was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature (FRSL) in 1999. She won the Suffrage Science award in 2011.

Personal life

Brenda met John Maddox, then a science correspondent for The Guardian, while visiting Europe in 1958. They married in 1960, and settled in London, where she raised two stepchildren and had three more children of her own. She died on June 16, 2019, aged 87.