(1930-1999) Also wrote as: hapman, Miriam Gardner, Morgan Ives
One of the leading writers of science fiction and fantasy from the 1960s to the 1990s, Bradley is a particular favorite of college-age women who appreciate the author’s strong female characters and the feminist perspective she brought to much of her genre fiction. Born in Albany, New York, a SF and fantasy fan from her teenage years, Bradley wrote for some amateur publications before making her first sale to a commercial science fiction magazine in 1952. Bradley went to college in Texas, married in 1949 and had three children. She later divorced and returned to academic studies at the University of California at Berkeley. Her novel-writing career began in the early ’60s. She sold science fiction and fantasy to Ace topics and other paperback developers. In this period Bradley also wrote softcore and semi-hardcore erotica under a variety of pseudonyms, including a series of lesbian novels published under the pen name of Miriam Gardner. Bradley seemed to have a particular interest in the last subject: she worked on a bibliographic “checklist” of lesbian literature, privately printed (something, along with the sex novels, Bradley apparently preferred not to talk about in later years).
Begun in 1962 with Planet Savers, the Dark-over novels would become Bradley’s signature series, stories of life on a distant planet colonized by the survivors of a crashed spaceship, where the sky is lit by a blood-red sun and society is run by the use of psychic powers. The series continued—with the help of collaborators in later years, due to the author’s health problems—until her death in 1999, nearly 30 volumes in all. But Bradley was probably most widely known for her best-selling Avalon series, begun in 1983 with The Mists of Avalon and followed, after an 11-year pause, by three sequels/prequels: The Forest House (1994), The Lady of Avalon (1997), and Priestess of Avalon (2000). The topics followed the legends of King Arthur and company from the perspective of the Arthurian women, Morgaine (Morgan LeFay), Gwendwyfar (Guinevere), and the rest. Anticipating and perhaps influencing the subsequent revival of interest in ancient goddess cults and female deities, The Mists of Avalon reveled in an age of dominating pagan feminism (and would, through the years, elicit an occasional criticism for a presumed anti-Christian and antimale bias).
Bradley also wrote many stand-alone science fiction novels, “sword and sorcery” fantasies and straight historicals, including The Firebrand (1987), her tale of the women of the Trojan War, and her savage gladiator fantasy, Warrior Woman (1985).
Works
- Black Trillium (with Elizabeth Waters) (1995);
- Bloody Sun (1964);
- Bluebeard’s Daughter (1968);
- Brass Dragon, The (1970);
- Castle Terror (1965);
- Catch Trap, The (1979);
- City of Sorcery (1984);
- Colors of Space (1983);
- Dark Intruder and Other Stories, The (1964);
- Dark Satanic (1988);
- Darkover Landfall (1972);
- Door Through Space (1961);
- Drums of Darkness (1976);
- Endless Universe, The (1979);
- Endless Voyage, The (1975);
- Exile’s Song (with Adrienne Martine Barnes) (1996);
- Falcons of Narabedla (1964);
- Fall ofAtlantis (1987);
- Firebrand, The (1987);
- Forbidden Tower (1977);
- Forest House, The
- (1994); Hawkmistress (1982);
- Heirs of Hammerfell (1989);
- Heritage of Hastur (1975);
- House Between the Worlds (1981);
- Hunters of the Red Moon (with Paul Edwin Zimmer) (1973);
- Inheritor, The (1984);
- Lady of Avalon, The (1997);
- Lady of the Trillium (with Elizabeth Waters)
- (1995); Mists ofAvalon, The (1983);
- Night’s Daughter (1985);
- Planet Savers (1962);
- Priestess of Avalon (2000);
- Rediscovery (with Mercedes Lackey) (1993);
- Ruins of Isis, The (1980);
- Seven from the Stars (1962);
- Sharra’s Exile (1981);
- Shattered Chain (1976);
- Souvenir of Monique (1967);
- Spell Sword, The (1974);
- Star of Danger (1965);
- Stormqueen (1978);
- Survey Ship (1980);
- Survivors, The (with Paul Edwin Zimmer) (1979);
- Sword of Aldones (1962);
- Thendara House (1983);
- Two to Conquer (1980);
- Warrior Woman (1985);
- Winds of Darkover (1970);
- Witch Hill (1990);
- World Wreckers (1971)
As Champman:
- I Am a Lesbian (1962)
- As Miriam Gardner:
- My Sister, My Love (1963);
- Strange Woman, The (1962);
- Twilight Lovers (1964)
- As Morgan Ives:
- Knives of Desire (1964);
- Spare Her Heaven (1963)
