Tanith Lee

Tanith Lee (1947-2015) was a British writer of fantasy, science fiction and horror, the author of more than 90 novels and some 300 short stories, and the first woman to win the British Fantasy Award for Best Novel.

She was born in London on 19 September 1947 and died at her home in East Sussex on 24 May 2015. Her first professional sale was "Eustace", a vignette of about ninety words, in 1968. Her first book was a children's fantasy, The Dragon Hoard, published by Macmillan in London in 1971. Her adult career began when the American paperback house DAW Books issued The Birthgrave in 1975, after a string of British publishers had turned it down. The far-future pair Don't Bite the Sun (1976) and Drinking Sapphire Wine (1977) followed.

Her Tales from the Flat Earth opened with Night's Master (1978), followed by Death's Master (1979), Delusion's Master (1981) and Delirium's Mistress (1986). Death's Master won the 1980 British Fantasy Award. The Silver Metal Lover (1981) tells of a teenage girl who falls for a robot. Later sequences include the Secret Books of Paradys, the Secret Books of Venus, and the Claidi Journals and Piratica books for younger readers. She also wrote two episodes of the BBC's Blake's 7, "Sand" and "Sarcophagus". Her short fiction won World Fantasy Awards in 1983 and 1984, and she received the World Fantasy lifetime achievement award in 2013 and a Bram Stoker lifetime award in 2014.

For collectors. The Birthgrave (1975), the novel that launched her adult career, first appeared as a mass-market paperback from the American house DAW Books, so the true first is a paperback rather than a hardback. Her first book, the children's fantasy The Dragon Hoard, was published by Macmillan in 1971, and Death's Master is sought as the novel that made her the first woman to win the British Fantasy Award for Best Novel.