Miranda Jane Seymour (born 8 August 1948) is an English literary critic, novelist and biographer of Robert Graves, Mary Shelley and Jean Rhys among others. Seymour is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. She elected to resign from the Royal Society of Literature in December 2023. She was formerly married to Andrew Sinclair, and Anthony Gottlieb and is now married to Ted Lynch.

Early life and education

Miranda Seymour was two years old when her parents moved into Thrumpton Hall, the family ancestral home. She detailed her unconventional upbringing in her 2008 memoir In My Father's House: Elegy for an Obsessive Love (Simon & Schuster, UK ), which appeared in the US as Thrumpton Hall (HarperCollins) and won the 2008 Pen Ackerley Prize for Memoir of the Year. She studied at Bedford College, London, now part of Royal Holloway, University of London, earning a BA in English in 1981.

Career

Seymour began her literary career in 1975 with an historical novel, The Stones of Maggiare. This was followed by six others concerned with Italy and Greece, including Daughter of Darkness, about Lucrezia Borgia, and Medea (1982). In 1982, Seymour turned to biography, beginning with a group portrait of Henry James in his later years, entitled A Ring of Conspirators. This was followed by biographies of Lady Ottoline Morrell, Mary Shelley and Robert Graves, upon whom she also based a novel, The Telling, and a radio play, Sea Music. In 2001, she came across material on Hellé Nice, a forgotten French Grand Prix racing driver of the 1930s. After extensive research, Seymour published an acclaimed book, The Bugatti Queen, in 2004 about Nice's ultimately tragic life. This was followed by another life of an unconventional woman, that of 1930s film star, Virginia Cherrill. This was also based on a substantial archive in private ownership, and published as Chaplin's Girl: The Lives and Loves of Virginia Cherrill in 2009. In 2002, Seymour published a book about herbs: A Brief History of Thyme. Noble Endeavours: Stories from England; Stories from Germany appeared in September 2013 from Simon & Schuster and was described as being a work of 'unfazed optimism'. Seymour returned to biography with In Byron's Wake (2018) which covered the lives of Lord Byron's wife and daughter, Annabella Milbanke and Ada Lovelace. I Used to Live Here Once: The Haunted Life of Jean Rhys was published by Harper Collins in 2022. Seymour reviews and writes articles for newspapers and literary journals, including The Economist, The Times, the Times Literary Supplement, Spectator, and the New York Review of Books. Formerly a Visiting Professor of English Studies at the University of Nottingham Trent, Seymour is currently the Royal Literary Fund Fellow at King's College London.

Fiction

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Juvenile fiction

Non-fiction

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