> Skip to content
  • Published: 4 July 1995
  • ISBN: 9780099479918
  • Imprint: Vintage
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 448
  • RRP: $24.99

Still Life




Reissued with a beautiful new illustrative cover. Frederica arrives at university, but she is not prepared for a horrifying event that will soon change her life forever

Frederica Potter arrives at Cambridge University greedy for knowledge, sex and love. It isn’t long before she becomes infatuated with a mysterious and controlling poet. Back in Yorkshire, her sister Stephanie abandons academia and is confronted with the boredom and frustrations of motherhood. Meanwhile, their younger brother Marcus begins to recover from a nervous breakdown. Each sibling is desperate to shape their own future, but a horrifying event will soon change their lives forever.

  • Published: 4 July 1995
  • ISBN: 9780099479918
  • Imprint: Vintage
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 448
  • RRP: $24.99

About the author

A S Byatt

A.S. Byatt is a novelist, short-story writer and critic of international renown. Her novels include Possession (winner of the Booker Prize 1990), the Frederica Quartet and The Children’s Book, which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Fiction. She was appointed CBE in 1990 and DBE in 1999, and was awarded the Erasmus Prize 2016 for her ‘inspiring contribution to life writing’ and the Pak Kyongni Prize 2017. In 2018 she received the Hans Christian Andersen Literature Award.

Also by A S Byatt

See all

Praise for Still Life

Marvellous... A major novel, inspiring laughter and tears

Iris Murdoch

Glorious… Frederica is a magnificent creation; awkward, fierce, intellectually voracious and sexually inexperienced

Francesca Segal, author of The Awkward Age

Affords enormous and continuous pleasure

Anita Brookner

Byatt is a wonderful writer, constantly engaging wherever she takes us

The Times