Marion Zimmer Bradley Biography

Dictionary of Literary Biography on Marion Zimmer Bradley

Marion Zimmer Bradley is a prolific writer of science fiction and fantasy. Born in Albany, New York, she attended New York State College for Teachers from 1946 to 1948 and Hardin-Simmons College, where she took a B.A. in 1964. She has also done graduate work at the University of California at Berkeley. In 1949 she married R. A. Bradley. After their divorce in 1964, she married Walter Breen. She has one child by her first husband and two by her second. Bradley has been actively involved in science fiction since adolescence, first as a fervent fan and then, gradually, as an author. Though she began publishing short stories in 1953, she did not begin writing professionally until the early 1960s. Early stylistic influences were Henry Kuttner, Theodore Sturgeon, Catherine L. Moore, and Jack Vance. From the beginning her works were reviewed, usually with favor, by the science-fiction press, but it was not until the 1970s that she began to receive attention from outside that narrow critical sphere.

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