Julian Barnes

Julian Patrick Barnes was born on 19 January 1946 in Leicester, England, and raised in the London suburbs. His parents were both French teachers, and the Francophilia that marks his career — the Flaubert obsession, the deep knowledge of French culture, the regular residences in France — was bred in the home. He attended the City of London School and Magdalen College, Oxford, where he read modern languages. He worked as a lexicographer on the Oxford English Dictionary supplement, then as a journalist and literary editor at the New Statesman, the Sunday Times, and the Observer. Under the pseudonym Dan Kavanagh, he wrote four crime novels in the 1980s featuring the bisexual detective Duffy.

Life and Career

Metroland (1980), his debut novel under his own name, was a coming-of-age story about a suburban London teenager who discovers French culture and returns disillusioned. Before She Met Me (1982) was a darker novel about sexual jealousy. But it was Flaubert’s Parrot (1984) that established Barnes as a major figure: a novel — or essay, or literary criticism, or biography, or all four — in which a retired English doctor obsessed with Gustave Flaubert searches for the stuffed parrot that sat on Flaubert’s desk while he wrote. The book is simultaneously a meditation on biography, truth, fiction, loss, and the relationship between a reader and a dead author. It was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and won the Prix Médicis in France.

A History of the World in 10½ Chapters (1989), a series of loosely connected narratives riffing on the story of Noah’s Ark, was his most formally adventurous work — blending fiction, essay, art criticism, and reportage. Talking It Over (1991), a love triangle told in competing monologues, was his most commercially successful. England, England (1998), a satire about a theme park that replaces the actual nation, was shortlisted for the Booker.

Arthur & George (2005), based on the real case of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s investigation of a miscarriage of justice, was his most conventional historical novel. The Sense of an Ending (2011), a compressed, devastating novel about memory, guilt, and the stories we construct about our past, won the Man Booker Prize at last — Barnes’s fourth shortlisting.

Nothing to Be Frightened Of (2008), a memoir-meditation on death, family, and the fear of oblivion, was his most personal book. Levels of Life (2013), a three-part meditation on grief following the death of his wife, the literary agent Pat Kavanagh, in 2008, is among the most moving works of bereavement literature in English.

Major Works and Themes

Barnes’s fiction circles obsessively around several related themes: the unreliability of memory and narrative; the relationship between history and fiction; the impossibility of capturing truth; the fear of death; and the consolations and deceptions of love. His prose is precise, ironical, and coolly elegant — sometimes too cool for readers who want rawer emotional access, but capable of sudden devastating tenderness when the mask drops.

Flaubert’s Parrot (1984) is his most original work — a book that invented a genre. The Sense of an Ending (2011) is his most emotionally resonant. Levels of Life (2013) is his most naked. A History of the World in 10½ Chapters (1989) is his most formally ambitious.

Critical Reception and Legacy

Barnes is one of the central figures of late-twentieth-century British fiction, alongside Martin Amis, Ian McEwan, and Salman Rushdie. He is the most Francophone of English novelists, the most formally inventive of the realists, and the most emotionally reserved of the sentimentalists. His influence on the novel-essay hybrid and on the fictional treatment of historical figures has been considerable.

Key Works

• Metroland (1980)
• Flaubert’s Parrot (1984)
• A History of the World in 10½ Chapters (1989)
• Talking It Over (1991)
• England, England (1998)
• Arthur & George (2005)
• Nothing to Be Frightened Of (2008)
• The Sense of an Ending (2011)
• Levels of Life (2013)
• The Noise of Time (2016)
• The Only Story (2018)

Collecting Barnes

Julian Barnes is collected by enthusiasts of contemporary British fiction and by Francophile literary collectors.

Metroland (1980, Jonathan Cape, London) is his debut and the scarcest title. Fine first editions in the dust jacket bring $300–$700.

Flaubert’s Parrot (1984, Jonathan Cape) is the centrepiece. Fine first editions bring $200–$500; the US edition (Knopf, 1985) is less sought.

The Sense of an Ending (2011, Jonathan Cape) benefits from the Booker Prize. Fine first editions bring $75–$200; signed copies $150–$400.

The Dan Kavanagh crime novels (Duffy, Fiddle City, Putting the Boot In, Going to the Dogs) are collected by Barnes completists at $50–$200 each.

Barnes signs at events. Signed copies of the major titles are available at moderate premiums.