{"product_id":"great-granny-webster-9781590170076","title":"Great Granny Webster","description":"\u003cb\u003eShortlisted for the Booker Prize \u003c\/b\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eThe real-life Guinness heiress offers an inside look at the lives of eccentric aristocrats in this \u003cb\u003e\"masterful . . . macabre fairy-tale and blackly humorous family portrait\" \u003c\/b\u003e(\u003ci\u003eLiterary Hub\u003c\/i\u003e).\u003ci\u003e \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eThis macabre, mordantly funny, partly auto-biographical novel reveals the gothic craziness behind the scenes in the great houses of the aristocracy, as witnessed through the unsparing eyes of an orphaned teenage girl. Great Granny Webster herself is a fabulous monster, the chilliest of matriarchs, presiding with steely self-regard over a landscape of ruined lives.\u003ci\u003e \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eGreat Granny Webster is Caroline Blackwood's masterpiece. Heiress to the Guinness fortune, Blackwood was celebrated as a great beauty and dazzling raconteur long before she made her name as a strikingly original writer.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAbout the Author\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCaroline Blackwood (1931-1996) was born into a rich Anglo-Irish aristocratic family. She rebelled against her background at an early age and led a hectic and bohemian life, which included marriages to the painter Lucian Freud, the pianist and composer Israel Citkowitz, and the poet Robert Lowell. In the 1970s Blackwood began to write. Among her books are several novels, including \u003ci\u003eGreat Granny Webster\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eCorrigan\u003c\/i\u003e (both available asNYRB Classics); \u003ci\u003eOn the Perimeter\u003c\/i\u003e, an account of the women's anti-nuclear protest at Greenham Common; and \u003ci\u003eThe Last of the Duchess\u003c\/i\u003e, about the old age of the Duchess of Windsor. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eHonor Moore's collections of poems are \u003ci\u003eRed Shoes, Darling, \u003c\/i\u003eand \u003ci\u003eMemoir\u003c\/i\u003e. She edited \u003ci\u003eAmy Lowell: Selected Poems\u003c\/i\u003e for the Library of America and is author of \u003ci\u003eThe White Blackbird\u003c\/i\u003e, a life of her grandmother, the painter Margarett Sargent.\u003cbr\u003e","brand":"New York Review of Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":50726241042706,"sku":"9781590170076","price":12.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0831\/4771\/8930\/files\/img_5b498eac-b450-4660-a437-568e726af16a.jpg?v=1734861309","url":"https:\/\/surprise-castle.myshopify.com\/products\/great-granny-webster-9781590170076","provider":"Surprise Castle","version":"1.0","type":"link"}