“Though I have never thought of myself as a book collector, there are shelves in our house browsed so often, on so many rainy winter nights, that the contents have seeped into me as if by osmosis.”

British writer

Dame Hilary Mary Mantel was a British writer best known for historical fiction, as well as memoir and short stories. Her work ranged across several forms, and she published from the mid-1980s onward. Her first novel, Every Day Is Mother's Day, appeared in 1985. Over her career she wrote 12 novels, two short story collections, a memoir, and many articles and opinion pieces.