The book is a retelling of the Camelot legend from the viewpoint of the female characters.īradley died in September of 1999. Her main novel series featured a sword and sorcery themed world known as Darkover, but she also wrote short stories, articles and books in other subjects.Īs an author, her most popular novel was The Mists of Avalon which was later made into a major motion picture starring Angelica Houston. It was here that she gained her writing chops and moved on to create novels of her own, becoming a professional full-time writer and editor by the early 1960s. She had been separated from him for many years before the divorce was finalized.ĭuring the 1950s, as a young wife with a small son, she became involved in the phenomenon known as science fiction fandom, writing for a variety of fanzines for nothing, but in time moved up to sell to professional science fiction digest magazines. Her second marriage to author Walter Breen in 1964 resulted in a son and a daughter, but ended badly in 1990.

Her first marriage to Robert Bradley in 1949 lasted fourteen years and they had one son together. Married twice, both of Bradley’s unions ended in divorce.

Bradley also trained as a singer, and at one time, in her younger days, worked as a target for a knife thrower in a carnival. In the end, she became a drop-out once more from not one, but three departments of education, “owing to deep disillusion”. She trained not only as a psychologist but also as a parapsychologist. Bradley moved to California soon after and went on to pursue graduate studies at the University of California, Berkely. She returned to college in the mid-sixties, where she graduated from Hardin-Simmons University in Texas with a Bachelor of Arts. Bradley first attended New York State College for Teachers from which she dropped out after two years. She was born on a farm in Albany, New York, during the Great Depression, to a father who was a carpenter and farmer and a mother who was a historian. Marion Eleanor Zimmer Bradley was an American author of fantasy novels such as The Mists of Avalon and the Darkover series, often writing with a feminist outlook and even, under a pen name, gay and lesbian titles. Locus Award for Best Fantasy Novel (1984)

The mists of avalon books in order