Middleton, Stanley (1919-2009), a British author, became known for his novels about middle-class family and marital relationships in the English provinces. Critics have praised Middleton’s understated, honest style and his insights into the lives of ordinary people.
Middleton shared the 1974 Booker Prize, the United Kingdom’s highest literary award, with Nadine Gordimer. Middleton was honored for his novel Holiday (1974). In Holiday, a man leaves his wife and stays for a week in a seaside rooming house, reviewing his failed marriage.
Middleton wrote 44 novels. They include A Short Answer (1958), Terms of Reference (1966), Apple of the Eye (1970), Brazen Prison (1971), In a Strange Land (1979), The Daysman (1984), Beginning to End (1991), Live and Learn (1996), Brief Hours (1997), and Against the Dark (1998).
Middleton was born on Aug. 1, 1919, in Nottingham, England. He earned a B.A. at the University of Nottingham in 1940 and served in the Royal Army from 1940 to 1946, during and after World War II. From 1958 to 1981, he headed the English department at High Pavement College, a sixth-form college in Nottingham. A sixth-form college in the United Kingdom provides instruction equivalent to the last two years of high school and the first year of college in the United States. Middleton died on July 25, 2009.
