Marion Zimmer Bradley

Marion Zimmer Bradley (1930–1999) was an American author of fantasy and science fiction, best known for the long-running Darkover series and her Arthurian novel The Mists of Avalon. Beginning her professional career in the 1950s, she developed Darkover into an expansive fictional world combining interstellar colonisation, feudal society, psychic powers and questions of gender and personal freedom. Her greatest commercial success, The Mists of Avalon, retold the legends of King Arthur through the experiences of Morgaine, Gwenhwyfar and the other women surrounding Camelot, helping to popularise female-centred reinterpretations of myth and legend.

Bradley was also an influential editor who published new writers through Marion Zimmer Bradley’s Fantasy Magazine and the Sword and Sorceress anthology series. Her literary legacy has, however, been profoundly damaged by allegations made after her death by her daughter, Moira Greyland, who accused Bradley of childhood sexual abuse. Bradley’s second husband, Walter Breen, was convicted of child molestation, and later accounts also raised serious questions about Bradley’s knowledge of and response to his abuse. These revelations have led many readers and writers to reassess both her personal reputation and the continuing place of her books within fantasy literature.