Ann Schlee
(1934-2023) – English novelist, Booker Prize nominee (1981)
Ann Schlee was born in Connecticut in 1934 and raised there by her American mother alongside her grandparents until the end of the second world war. From 1945, Schlee moved to Africa and lived with her parents in Egypt, Sudan and Eritrea respectively. After her time in Africa, Ann attended boarding school in England, before coming to Somerville in 1955 to read English.
After Graduation, Ann married the artist Nick Shlee with whom she had 4 children. She was a teacher for several years, beginning after graduation from Somerville at Rosemary Hall, Connecticut, before continuing her teaching in England at various schools and tutoring school refusers.
It was during this period that Schlee’s literary career began with The Strangers (1971), the first of five book Schlee wrote for children. Her final children’s book, The Vandal (1980) was also the most successful of her youth aimed work; it was a runner up for the Carnegie Medal and winner of the 1980 Guardian Prize for children’s literature.
Ann Schlee’s most successful publication overall, however, was Rhine Journey (1981). This lapidary novella explores the interior life of Charlotte Morrison, a repressed middle-aged spinster aboard the eponymous Rhine river cruise during the 1850s, for whom a chance encounter opens the floodgates to desire, regret, and possibility. The novel, described by The Guardian as “a little period gem of feeling and clarity” was Booker-nominated in the same year Salman Rushdie scooped the gong for Midnight’s Children. Today, it is discovering newfound popularity and critical praise for its discreet radicalism and the subtly incendiary interior life of its protagonist. Schlee’s grandson, Sam, for instance has noted that reading the novel is to realise that, beneath the seemingly conventional surface, the novel is ‘an explosive device…and it is a shock to realise that your grandmother is a bomb maker.’
In addition to her writing and teaching, Schlee ran a popular youth group at her local church until her death in November 2023.
Did you know?
Ann wrote her first five books by waking up at 5AM and writing before embarking on the school run for her 4 children.