She explored the struggles of young women in the novel “The L-Shaped Room” but found her biggest success with a children’s book about a magical cupboard.
One of Britain’s most ambitious and intellectual novelists, she won the Booker Prize with “Possession,” her 1990 tale of illicit love spanning two centuries.
“You are my voice in English,” Gabriel García Márquez told her. She insisted that her name appear on the covers of books she translated, including with that of Cervantes.