Hilary Mantel

Hilary Mantel was born in Derbyshire, England in 1952 to Catholic parents. She attended Catholic school before pursuing a degree in law, first attending the London School of Economics before transferring to the University of Sheffield. While in her adolescence, Mantel began experiencing debilitating pain. Doctors said the pain was psychological and prescribed her anti-depressants and anti-psychotic medication. The pain continued, as did misdiagnoses, until Mantel was eventually correctly diagnosed with endometriosis when she was in her 20s. After graduating from university, Mantel worked as a social worker, which informed her first two novels, Every Day is Mother’s Day (1985) and its sequel Vacant Possession (1986), both of which feature characters who are social workers. Mantel moved with her husband, a geologist, to Botswana in 1977. The couple lived there for five years before moving to Saudi Arabia, where they stayed for four years. Mantel drew on her experience in Saudi Arabia for her third novel, Eight Months on Ghazzah Street (1988). Mantel continued to publish books—including novels, short story collections, and a memoir—regularly through the 1990s and early 2000s. She then achieved her greatest success with a trilogy of historical novels following Henry VIII’s famed minister Thomas Cromwell. Those novels formed the so-called Thomas Cromwell series, which includes Wolf Hall (2009), Bring Up the Bodies (2012), and The Mirror & the Light (2020). Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies both won the Booker Prize, while The Mirror & the Light was longlisted for that prize.