Mary Renault (born Eileen Mary Challans, 4 September 1905 – 13 December 1983) was an English writer.
Renault received an undergraduate degree in English from St Hugh’s College, Oxford, in 1928. She then trained as a nurse at the Radcliffe Infirmary in Oxford, where she met her lifelong partner, the nurse Julie Mullard. Renault worked as a nurse until 1945. In 1948, she and her partner emigrated to South Africa, where Renaut lived until her death.
Books
- Purposes of Love (US title: Promise of Love) (1939)
- Kind Are Her Answers (1940)
- The Friendly Young Ladies (US title: The Middle Mist) (1944)
- Return to Night (1947)
- The North Face (1948)
- The Charioteer (1953)
- The Last of the Wine (1956)
- The King Must Die (1958)
- The Bull from the Sea (1962)
- The Mask of Apollo (1966)
- Fire from Heaven (1969)
- The Persian Boy (1972)
- The Praise Singer (1978)
- Funeral Games (1981)
Non-fiction
- The Lion in the Gateway: The Heroic Battles of the Greeks and Persians at Marathon, Salamis, and Thermopylae (1964)
- The Nature of Alexander (1975)
Books about her
- Mary Renault: a biography, by David Sweetman (1993)
- The masks of Mary Renault: a literary biography, by Caroline Zilboorg (2001)
