Great Granny Webster: The rediscovered dark masterpiece shortlisted for the Booker Prize
Formats & Editions
CAROLINE BLACKWOOD'S MASTERPIECE, SHORTLISTED FOR THE 1977 BOOKER PRIZE
*A New Yorker summer reading pick of 2026*'Full of genuine black humour' LONDON REVIEW OF BOOKS
'A masterpiece . . . her humour is as wicked as it is mordant' JOHN BANVILLE
'Caroline Blackwood sits firmly alongside the greats like Shirley Jackson and Patricia Highsmith' ARAMINTA HALL
In her gloomy mausoleum of a home, the terrifying matriarch Great Granny Webster spends her days sitting bolt upright in a Victorian chair, entirely alone except for her one-eyed maid - and her orphaned great-granddaughter, sent to stay for the sea air. She presides over three generations of ill-fated women, and a twisted family history which spools back through hedonistic 20s London to a crumbling aristocratic pile where two children are kept silently hidden in a distant wing.
This macabre, viciously funny, partly autobiographical novel cuts to the bone of a dysfunctional dynasty, and captures Blackwood at her pitch-black best.
'Idiosyncratic, dark and extremely funny' LUCY SCHOLES
'A unique literary experience' PHILIP LARKIN
'As gripping as a whodunit' TLS
'Shocking, brilliant, and wickedly funny, Great Granny Webster is Caroline Blackwood's best book' JONATHAN RABAN
Praise for Great Granny Webster
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Matriarchal relations are haunted by a phantom man - in this case a father - but the narrator is all eye and ear, the better to capture the indelible characters of Granny Webster and Aunt Lavinia. The book is full of genuine black humour - London Review of Books
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Blackwood's works delve deeply into complicated, ugly relationships between women, something that is especially fascinating when the author herself was defined throughout her lifetime by her marriages to high-profile men. Persistently, Caroline Blackwood is hailed through the ages as the ultimate muse-which is a disgrace. She should be hailed as one of the greatest, darkest writers who ever lived
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Shocking, brilliant, and wickedly funny, Great Granny Webster is Caroline Blackwood's best book
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