Lorna Sage

Lorna Sage (13 January 1943 – 11 January 2001) was an English academic, literary critic and author, remembered especially for contributing to consideration of women's writing and for a memoir of her early life, Bad Blood. She taught English literature at the University of East Anglia.

Biography Sage was born in Hanmer — in Wales near the border with England — as the eldest child of Valma (née Meredith-Morris) and Eric Stockton, a haulage contractor, then serving as a second lieutenant in the Royal Welch Fusiliers. Sage attended a nearby Flintshire village school and then the Girls' High School in Whitchurch, Shropshire.

Lorna Stockton became pregnant by Victor Sage and they married in 1959 when she was 16. Their daughter Sharon was born in 1960, after which the couple managed to continue their education. Lorna won a scholarship to read English at Durham University, after the university's St Aidan's College changed its admission rules to admit married students. They both graduated in 1964 with first class honours, an event reported on the front page of the Daily Mail at the time.

Sage's childhood is recounted in her memoir Bad Blood (2000), which traces her disappointment in a family where warped behaviour passed down from generation to generation. The book won the Whitbread Biography Award on 3 January 2001.

Sage married Rupert Hodson in 1979 after meeting him in Florence on a sabbatical.

Sage's book reviews appeared in the London Review of Books, The Times Literary Supplement, The New York Times Book Review and The Observer, mentioning the works of Angela Carter and covering studies of works of authors who included Christina Stead, Doris Lessing, Thomas Love Peacock, John Milton and Thomas Hardy.

Publications Peacock: The Satirical Novels (1976) Doris Lessing (1983) Last Edwardians: An Illustrated History of Violet Trefusis & Alice Keppel (1985) Angela Carter (1990) Women in the House of Fiction (1992) Flesh and the Mirror; Essays on the Art of Angela Carter (1994) The Cambridge Guide to Women's Writing in English (1999) Bad Blood (2000) Moments of Truth: Twelve Twentieth Century Women Writers (2001): a collection of literary essays Good as her word: Selected Journalism (2004)