You are viewing your 1 free article this month. Login to read more articles.
Tinder Press to mark Maggie O'Farrell's 25th anniversary with special editions of all her novels
To mark 25 years since Tinder Press published Maggie O’Farrell’s debut novel, After You’d Gone, the Headline imprint is republishing all nine of her backlist titles as special editions with new jacket designs.
Headline has published all of O’Farrell’s novels, many of which have been Sunday Times bestsellers and won awards.
Her most recent novel, The Marriage Portrait, was shortlisted for the Women’s Prize. The Hand that First Held Mine won the 2010 Costa Novel Award; and Hamnet won the 2020 Women’s Prize for Fiction and was Waterstones’ Book of the Year.
O’Farrell said: “The best writing you can do is the writing you can’t not do. You have to tell the story that is burning to be told. I feel lucky to have been a writer for 25 years, although I’m finding it hard to believe it’s been that long.”
The author was born in Coleraine in Northern Ireland and grew up in Wales and Scotland. She almost died from viral encephalitis at the age of eight, an illness which left her bedridden for many months. She was working at The Independent on Sunday when she began to write her first novel. She attended a creative-writing course at The Arvon Foundation, where her tutors Elspeth Barker and Barbara Trapido encouraged her to find an agent and a publisher.
O’Farrell was 27 when Headline picked up After You’d Gone from agent Victoria Hobbs, now managing director of AM Heath.
Hobbs said: “It is a great privilege and a huge pleasure to have travelled alongside a writer of Maggie’s calibre for all these years, and hopefully to continue for many more years and many more books. The calibre was all there on display in her glorious first novel After You’d Gone and I feel excited for those readers who may not have discovered it yet, and for those, like me, who re-read it after many years and discover one of the best – and most devastating – love stories.”
The special 25th anniversary editions of O’Farrell’s books will be published on 27th March 2025.
After You’d Gone will contain a new foreword from Ali Smith. I Am, I Am, I Am will have a new introduction written by Ann Patchett. They will all have new jacket cover designs.
Continues...
Read More
Mary-Anne Harington, Maggie’s editor at Headline said: “Everyone who reads After You’d Gone can picture exactly where they were when they read it – it’s one of those truly consuming love stories that makes life stand still, and never leaves you.”
She added: “We realised at Headline that there are readers who have discovered Maggie’s writing through Hamnet or The Marriage Portrait, who haven’t yet encountered her early work, and we wanted to repackage each title completely afresh, to ensure that they speak as compellingly as possible to readers of today.”
In total, O’Farrell’s nine novels have sold over 4 million copies in the UK and Ireland and have been translated in 43 languages around the world.
Her memoir, I Am, I Am, I Am, which detailed her 17 near-death experiences, debuted at number one on the Sunday Times bestseller list in 2018.
Bea Carvalho, head of books at Waterstones said: "It has been a delight over the years to work with Headline on championing the extraordinary works of Maggie O’Farrell. We were proud to name Hamnet our Book of the Year in 2020, bringing much needed joy into our bookshops after a strange and uncertain year with this extremely special book. We look forward to celebrating 25 years of excellent storytelling this year, and to reintroducing readers to her wonderful debut."
O’Farrell recently co-wrote the screenplay for Hamnet, with Chloé Zhao who is also directing the adaptation. The forthcoming film will star Paul Mescal and Jessie Buckley. The novel has previously been adapted for the stage by the Royal Shakespeare Company.
The author is also a children’s writer and has published three illustrated children’s books with Walker Books.
