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1961-
Born in Birmingham in 1961, Jonathan Coe attended King Edward's School, Birmingham, then studied English Literature at Trinity College, Cambridge. After completing a Phd at Warwick University on Henry Fielding's Tom Jones, he went on to teach at Warwick. Coe also worked as a musician, composing and playing jazz and cabaret, and music has since been a recurring theme throughout many of his novels. After a spell working as a legal proofreader, Coe's novel The accidental woman was published in 1987.
He has written seven novels in total, including What a carve up!, which won the 1995 John Llewellyn Rhys Prize, and The house of sleep, which won the 1997 Writers' Guild Best Fiction Award. The Rotters' Club was published in 2001, and is set in 1970's Birmingham. It tells the story of four teenage school friends, and how their lives are affected by the social and political changes going on around them. It was adapted for television in 2005 for the BBC, and its sequel The closed circle was published in 2004, updating the characters' stories for the 1990's.
His most recent novel is The rain before it falls, story of three generations of a Shropshire family. Through a series of photographs the history of the family unfolds, unravelling a mystery left by the dying Rosamond. The book features several Shropshire locations, most notably Much Wenlock, but also Shrewsbury and the Long Mynd. One section is set around the filming in 1949 of the novel Gone To earth (1917) by Mary Webb.
As well as novels, Jonathan Coe has also written three biographies. His biography of the novelist B.S. Johnson won the Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-fiction 2005. The author currently lives in London.
The accidental woman (1987)
A touch of love (1989)
The dwarves of death (1990)
Humphrey Bogart: take it and like it (1991)
James Stewart: leading man (1994)
What a carve up! (1994)
The house of sleep (1997)
The Rotters' Club (2001)
Like a fiery elephant: the story of B.S. Johnson (2004)
The closed circle (2004)
The rain before it falls (2007)
Several are available in the West Midlands Creative Literature Collection
There are many online sources of information about the author. A good starting point is the Wikipedia article at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Coe. The British Council Contemporary Writers page at http://www.contemporarywriters.com/authors/?p=auth22 includes a good critical perspective.
Page created 3 July 2008 and last
updated 3 July 2008
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