Howard worked briefly as an actress in provincial repertory and occasionally as a model before her writing career, which began in 1947. The Beautiful Visit, Howard's first novel, was described as "distinctive, self-assured and remarkably sensual", won the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize in 1951 for best novel by a writer under 30. She next collaborated with Robert Aickman, writing three of the six short stories in the collection We Are for the Dark. Her second novel, The Long View, describes a marriage in reverse chronology; Angela Lambert remarked, "Why The Long View isn't recognised as one of the great novels of the 20th century I will never know." Five further novels followed before she embarked on her best known work, the Cazalet Chronicles, at the suggestion of her stepson Martin Amis. The Chronicles were a family saga "about the ways in which English life changed during the war years, particularly for women." They follow three generations of a middle-class English family and draw heavily on Howard's own life and memories. The first four volumes, The Light Years, Marking Time, Confusion, and Casting Off, were published from 1990 to 1995. The fifth, All Change, was written in just a year and published in 2013; it was her final novel. Millions of copies of the Cazalet Chronicles were sold worldwide. The Light Years and Marking Time were serialised by Cinema Verity for BBC Television as The Cazalets in 2001. A BBC Radio 4 version in 45 episodes was also broadcast from 2012. Howard wrote the screenplay for the 1989 movieGetting It Right, directed by Randal Kleiser, based on her 1982 novel of the same name, as well as TV scripts for Upstairs, Downstairs. She also wrote a book of short stories, Mr. Wrong, and edited two anthologies, including The Lover's Companion.
Autobiography and biographies
Howard's autobiography, Slipstream, was published in 2002. A biography, entitled Elizabeth Jane Howard: A Dangerous Innocence by Artemis Cooper, was published by John Murray in 2017. A reviewer said it was "strongest in the case it makes for the virtues of Howard's fiction".
Personal life
Howard married Peter Scott in 1942, at age 19, and they had a daughter, Nicola. Howard left Scott in 1946 to become a writer, and they were divorced in 1951. At this time she was employed as part-time secretary to the pioneering canals conservation organisation the Inland Waterways Association, where she met and collaborated with Robert Aickman. She had an affair with Aickman, described in her autobiography Slipstream. Her second marriage, to Australian broadcaster Jim Douglas-Henry in 1958, was brief. Her third marriage, to novelist Kingsley Amis, whom she met while organising the Cheltenham Literary Festival, lasted from 1965 to 1983; for part of that time, 1968–1976, they lived at Lemmons, a Georgian house in Barnet, where Howard wrote Something in Disguise. Her stepson, Martin Amis, has credited her with encouraging him to become a more serious reader and writer. In later life, she lived in Bungay, Suffolk, and was appointed CBE in 2000. She died at home on 2 January 2014, aged 90.
