Author

Robert Holdstock

Robert Holdstock (1948 - 2009)

Robert Paul Holdstock was born in Kent in 1948. He received a MSc in medical zoology and spent several years in the early '70s in medical research before becoming a full-time writer in 1976. His first published story appeared in the New Worlds magazine in 1968 and for the early part of his career he wrote science fiction - including, in 1980, Tour of the Universe, co-written with Malcolm Edwards, for which theme park rights were sold, and the film novelisation of John Boorman's The Emerald Forest - but it is with Fantasy that he is most closely associated. 1984 saw the publication of Mythago Wood, winner of the BSFA and World Fantasy Awards for Best novel, and widely regarded as one of the key texts of modern fantasy; it and its follow-ups cemented his reputation as the definitive portrayer of the wild wood. Robert Holdstock died in November 2009, just four months after the publication of Avilion, the final Ryhope Wood novel.