Profile
Carol Shields
Carol Shields was born and grew up in Oak Park, a suburb of Chicago. She was the third child of a sweet-factory manager and a schoolteacher.After Hanover College, Indiana, she won a place on an exchange programme with Exeter University. There she found a more academic atmosphere, in which she thrived, and a Canadian engineering graduate student, whom she subsequently married.Over the next ten years or so she moved around Canada with her husband, had five children, came back to England (Manchester) for three years, and wrote the occasional short story. Age twenty-nine, she wrote seven poems for a Canadian Broadcasting Corporation Young Writers’ Competition – and won. There followed a period of poetry writing, a master’s programme in English at the University of Ottawa, a thesis on Susanna Moodie, a 19th-century Canadian fiction writer and two books of poetry, Others and Intersect. The week she turned forty her first novel Small Ceremonies, was published, her thesis was accepted for publication, and she was about to leave for a year in France during her husband’s sabbatical. There she immediately started her second novel, The Box Garden.She published two collections of short stories as well as six novels. Mary Swann was the first to be published in the UK in 1990, followed by Happenstance, which combined two earlier novels published separately, in 1991 and The Republic of Love in 1992. The Stone Diaries was published in August 1993, and was short-listed for the Booker Prize. It is now a bestselling paperback, and won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in April 1995. Various Miracles, a collection of short stories, was published to critical rapture in November 1994, and her first two novels, Small Ceremonies and The Box Garden, saw their first UK publication in February and June 1995 respectively.In August 1997 her novel Larry’s Party was published by Fourth Estate, and went on to win the UK’s coveted Orange Prize for Women’s Fiction in May 1998. A new collection of short fiction, Dressing Up for the Carnival, was published in February 2000. Her last novel, Unless, was published in the UK in 2002 by Fourth Estate and went on to be shortlisted for both the Orange Prize and the Booker Prize.Carol Shields passed away in July 2003.
Carol Shields in our features
![Cover of: THE REPUBLIC OF LOVE [ePub edition]](http://images.harpercollins.co.uk/hcwebimages/HCCOVERS/058400/058401-FC222.jpg)
THE REPUBLIC OF LOVE [ePub edition]
From the Orange Prize-winning and Booker Prize-shortlisted author, a hymn to the pleasures and pains, and even the raptures of an unspectacular life.
Publication date: UK 24th Nov 2011
MARY SWANN [ePub edition]
![Cover of: MARY SWANN [ePub edition]](http://images.harpercollins.co.uk/hcwebimages/HCCOVERS/060600/060673-FC63.jpg)
‘One of the best novels I have read this year. It’s deft, funny, poignant, surprising and beautifully shaped.’ Margaret Atwood
Publication date: UK 24th Nov 2011
DUET [ePub edition]
![Cover of: DUET [ePub edition]](http://images.harpercollins.co.uk/hcwebimages/HCCOVERS/060200/060273-FC63.jpg)
Orange Prize and Pulitzer Prize-winning Carol Shields’ tender, funny and wonderfully insightful portrait of two sisters struggling to rediscover themselves amidst the perplexing swirl of family life.
Publication date: UK 24th Nov 2011
LARRY’S PARTY [ePub edition]
![Cover of: LARRY’S PARTY [ePub edition]](http://images.harpercollins.co.uk/hcwebimages/HCCOVERS/060400/060420-FC63.jpg)
The Orange Prize-winning novel of Larry Weller, a man who discovers the passion of his life in the ordered riotousness of Hampton Court’s Maze.
Publication date: UK 24th Nov 2011
SMALL CEREMONIES [ePub edition]
![Cover of: SMALL CEREMONIES [ePub edition]](http://images.harpercollins.co.uk/hcwebimages/HCCOVERS/076400/076489-FC63.jpg)
Publication date: UK 24th Nov 2011
THE BOX GARDEN [ePub edition]
![Cover of: THE BOX GARDEN [ePub edition]](http://images.harpercollins.co.uk/hcwebimages/HCCOVERS/076400/076488-FC63.jpg)
Publication date: UK 24th Nov 2011
THE STONE DIARIES [ePub edition]
![Cover of: THE STONE DIARIES [ePub edition]](http://images.harpercollins.co.uk/hcwebimages/HCCOVERS/059900/059978-FC63.jpg)
‘The Stone Diaries’ is the story of one woman’s life, a truly sensuous novel which reflects and illuminates the unsettled decades of our century. Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Critics Circle Award and short-listed for the Booker Prize.
Publication date: UK 24th Nov 2011
HAPPENSTANCE [ePub edition]
![Cover of: HAPPENSTANCE [ePub edition]](http://images.harpercollins.co.uk/hcwebimages/HCCOVERS/060200/060218-FC63.jpg)
These companion novels – by turns touching, compassionate and humorous – tell the stories of Jack and Brenda Bowman. In all the years of their marriage they have hardly ever been apart.
Publication date: UK 24th Nov 2011
DRESSING UP FOR THE CARNIVAL [ePub edition]
![Cover of: DRESSING UP FOR THE CARNIVAL [ePub edition]](http://images.harpercollins.co.uk/hcwebimages/HCCOVERS/059200/059282-FC63.jpg)
A new collection of short stories from the author of The Stone Diaries (winner of the Pulitzer prize) and Larry’s Party (winner of the Orange prize).
Publication date: UK 24th Nov 2011
VARIOUS MIRACLES [ePub edition]
![Cover of: VARIOUS MIRACLES [ePub edition]](http://images.harpercollins.co.uk/hcwebimages/HCCOVERS/059000/059032-FC63.jpg)
‘Shield writes with that big heart of hers ablaze’ Sunday Times
Publication date: UK 17th Nov 2011
A CELIBATE SEASON [ePub edition]
![Cover of: A CELIBATE SEASON [ePub edition]](http://images.harpercollins.co.uk/hcwebimages/HCCOVERS/060200/060207-FC63.jpg)
In an original collaboration two award-winning authors, Carol Shields and Blanche Howard, have written an immensely enjoyable novel which give us both sides of a story about the breakdown of traditional roles, rules and communication in a marriage.
Publication date: UK 19th Aug 2010
UNLESS [ePub edition]
![Cover of: UNLESS [ePub edition]](http://images.harpercollins.co.uk/hcwebimages/HCCOVERS/060200/060245-FC63.jpg)
Dazzling novel from Carol Shields, author of ‘The Stone Diaries’, winner of the Pulitzer Prize, and ‘Larry’s Party’, winner of the Orange Prize.
Publication date: UK 19th Aug 2010
COLLECTED STORIES [ePub edition]
![Cover of: COLLECTED STORIES [ePub edition]](http://images.harpercollins.co.uk/hcwebimages/HCCOVERS/044300/044312-FC63.jpg)
For the first time all of Carol Shields’ remarkable short stories – some previously unpublished – are gathered together in one volume. ‘Carol Shields’ stories have given me happiness, not just pleasure’ Alice Munro
Publication date: UK 29th Jul 2010
LARRY’S PARTY
The new novel from the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of ‘The Stone Diaries’.
Publication date: UK 26th Mar 2010
DRESSING UP FOR THE CARNIVAL
A new collection of short stories from the author of The Stone Diaries (winner of the Pulitzer prize) and Larry’s Party (winner of the Orange prize).
Publication date: UK 26th Feb 2010
VARIOUS MIRACLES
‘Shield writes with that big heart of hers ablaze’ Sunday Times
Publication date: UK 1st Jul 2008
COLLECTED STORIES
For the first time all of Carol Shields’ remarkable short stories – some previously unpublished – are gathered together in one volume. ‘Carol Shields’ stories have given me happiness, not just pleasure’ Alice Munro
Publication date: UK 7th Mar 2005
MARY SWANN
‘One of the best novels I have read this year. It’s deft, funny, poignant, surprising and beautifully shaped.’ Margaret Atwood
Publication date: UK 4th Aug 2003
DUET
Orange Prize and Pulitzer Prize-winning Carol Shields’ tender, funny and wonderfully insightful portrait of two sisters struggling to rediscover themselves amidst the perplexing swirl of family life.
Publication date: UK 4th Aug 2003
HAPPENSTANCE
‘The beautiful irony of “Happenstance” is that its novels are both bound together and held apart by the strength of the marriage they describe.’ Rupert Christiansen, Harpers and Queen
Publication date: UK 3rd Mar 2003
UNLESS
Dazzling novel from Carol Shields, author of ‘The Stone Diaries’, winner of the Pulitzer Prize, and ‘Larry’s Party’, winner of the Orange Prize.
Publication date: UK 3rd Mar 2003
THE STONE DIARIES
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Governor-General’s Award, and short-listed for the Booker Prize. ‘The Stone Diaries’ is the story of one woman’s life, a truly sensuous novel which relects and illuminates the unsettled decades of our century.
Publication date: UK 3rd Mar 2003
THE REPUBLIC OF LOVE
‘“The Republic of Love” marries a wide diversity of elements, mythical and modern, ironic and moving, exhilarating and melancholy…a love-surveying story that is enticingly seductive.’ Times Literary Supplement
Publication date: UK 3rd Mar 2003
DRESSING UP FOR THE CARNIVAL
A bestselling collection of short stories from the author of The Stone Diaries (winner of the Pulitzer prize) and Larry’s Party (winner of the Orange prize).
Publication date: UK 3rd Mar 2003
A CELIBATE SEASON
In an original collaboration two award-winning authors, Carol Shields and Blanche Howard, have written an immensely enjoyable novel which give us both sides of a story about the breakdown of traditional roles, rules and communication in a marriage.
Publication date: UK 3rd Aug 2000