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Marion Zimmer was born in Albany, NY, on June 3, 1930, and married Robert Alden Bradley in 1949. Mrs. Bradley received her B.A. in 1964 from Hardin Simmons University in Abilene, Texas, then did graduate work at the University of California, Berkeley, from 1965-67. She was a science fiction/fantasy fan from her middle teens, and made her first sale as an adjunct to an amateur fiction contest in Fantastic/Amazing Stories in 1949. She had written as long as she could remember, but wrote only for school magazines and fanzines until 1952, when she sold her first professional short story to Vortex Science Fiction. She wrote everything from science fiction to Gothics, but is probably best known for her Darkover novels. In addition to her novels, Mrs. Bradley edited many magazines, amateur and professional, including Marion Zimmer Bradley's Fantasy Magazine, which she started in 1988. She also edited an annual anthology called Sword and Sorceress for DAW Books. Over the years she turned more to fantasy; The House Between the Worlds, although a selection of the Science Fiction Book Club, was fantasy undiluted . She wrote a novel of the women in the Arthurian legends -- Morgan Le Fay, the Lady of the Lake, and others - entitled Mists of Avalon, which made the NY Times best seller list both in hardcover and trade paperback, and she also wrote The Firebrand, a novel about the women of the Trojan War. Her historical fantasy novels, The Forest House, Lady of Avalon, Mists of Avalon are prequels to Priestess of Avalon. She died in Berkeley, California on September 25, 1999, four days after suffering a major heart attack. She was survived by her brother, Leslie Zimmer; her sons, David Bradley and Patrick Breen; her daughter, Moira Stern; and her grandchildren.
This is the legend of Arthur retold from the women's perspective. Morgaine, while not a fairy, is a woman of power, whose contribution to the rise and fall of Arthur is far more complex, more personal, than tradition recalls. Guinevere is a committed Christian, whose insistence on abandoning the old religion also contributes to Arthur's fall. The roles of Lancelot and Merlin are also somewhat recast, with neither emerging as good or bad, but searingly human in their prides and fallibilities. There is definitely magic in this story, not the sort that can be conjured with a wand but that which requires study and passion and where curses harm the curser as much as the cursed. And there is love of such depth and majesty that other romantic figures pale beside it: love that continues beyond death, that crosses boundaries of gender and family; love of country, of God or the gods, companionable love for fellow human beings. The range and breadth of the concepts in this book make it truly great in any genre, but it is unarguably one of the best fantasy books ever written. (Kirkus UK)
