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1bleuroses
Frances Towers, born in Calcutta in 1885, was the eldest of five children of a British Government telegraph engineer.
She went to school in Bedford from the age of nine and between 1905-31 worked at the Bank of England, as a clerk and then as Assistant to the Supervisor. She wrote articles and entered literary competitions and spent her holidays abroad indulging her passions for Gothic architecture, Old Masters and mountains; her first short story was published in 1929. During the late 1930s 'Miss Fay', as she was known to her pupils, began teaching English and History at Southlands School, Harrow, where her sister was headmistress.
Most of Frances Towers' short stories were written during the late 1940s, but she died suddenly of pneumonia on New Year's Day 1948, the year before the publication of her only book Tea with Mr Rochester. (Reprinted by Persephone Books.)
She went to school in Bedford from the age of nine and between 1905-31 worked at the Bank of England, as a clerk and then as Assistant to the Supervisor. She wrote articles and entered literary competitions and spent her holidays abroad indulging her passions for Gothic architecture, Old Masters and mountains; her first short story was published in 1929. During the late 1930s 'Miss Fay', as she was known to her pupils, began teaching English and History at Southlands School, Harrow, where her sister was headmistress.
Most of Frances Towers' short stories were written during the late 1940s, but she died suddenly of pneumonia on New Year's Day 1948, the year before the publication of her only book Tea with Mr Rochester. (Reprinted by Persephone Books.)
2bleuroses
Alfred Duff Cooper, 1st Viscount Norwich GCMG, DSO, PC (22 February 1890 – 1 January 1954), known as Duff Cooper, was a British Conservative Party politician, diplomat and author. He wrote six books, including an autobiography, Old Men Forget, and a biography of Talleyrand. He wrote one novel, Operation Heartbreak (1950), which has been republished by Persephone Books.
The only son of fashionable society doctor Sir Alfred Cooper and Lady Agnes Duff (sister of Alexander Duff, 1st Duke of Fife), he was the youngest of four children and enjoyed a typical gentleman's upbringing of country estates, London society, Eton College and New College, Oxford. He had royal blood, being a descendant of King William IV and his mistress Dorothy Jordan.
Early life and marriage
At Oxford, his Eton friendship with John Manners won him entry into a famous and fashionable circle of young aristocrats and intellectuals known as The Coterie, including Patrick Shaw-Stewart, Raymond Asquith (son of the Prime Minister), Sir Denis Anson, Edward Horner and most famously Lady Diana Manners. He cultivated a reputation for eloquence and fast living and although he had established a reputation as a poet, he earned an even better reputation for gambling, womanising, and drinking in his studied emulation of the life of Charles James Fox.
Following Oxford, he entered the Foreign Service and, owing to the national importance of his work at the cipher desk, he was excluded from military service until 1917, when he joined the Grenadier Guards. He served with distinction as a lieutenant in the campaigns of 1918, winning a DSO for conspicuous gallantry. Almost all of his closest friends, including Shaw-Stewart, Horner, Asquith and John Manners were killed in the war, drawing him closer to Lady Diana Manners, whom he married in 1919. An extremely popular social figure hailed for her beauty and eccentricities, she was one of several daughters born to the Duke and Duchess of Rutland; her biological father, however, was believed to be Harry Cust, known as one of the most handsome men of his day.
The Coopers' marriage was fraught with infidelities, notably Duff's affairs with the Franco-American Singer sewing-machine heiress Daisy Fellowes, the socialite Gloria Guinness, the French novelist Louise Leveque de Vilmorin, the writer Susan Mary Alsop (then an American diplomat's wife, by whom he had an illegitimate son, William Patten Jr.), Boy Capel's wife Diana, and the Anglo-Irish socialite and fashion model Maxime de La Falaise, although Lady Diana reportedly did not mind, explaining to their son that 'They were the flowers, but I was the tree'.
Political career
Returning to the Foreign Service, he became principal private secretary to two ministers and played a significant role in the Egyptian and Turkish crises of the early 1920s before winning a seat in Parliament as a Conservative for Oldham in 1924. He gave one of the most acclaimed maiden speeches of the century and became known as a stalwart supporter of Stanley Baldwin, the Prime Minister, and a friend of Chancellor of the Exchequer, Winston Churchill. He became Financial Secretary to the War Office in January 1928 before losing his seat in the 1929 election when the Conservative Party lost power.
Turning to literature, he produced Talleyrand (1932),a short biography that was published by his nephew Rupert Hart-Davis to critical praise and lasting success. The 1931 by-election for the constituency of Westminster St George's saw the Empire Free Trade Crusade party threatening the Conservative position at a time when satisfaction with Baldwin's leadership was at a low. When the original Conservative candidate stepped down, Duff Cooper agreed to contest the election in what was regarded as a referendum on Baldwin's leadership. He won the seat with a majority of 5,710. thus returning to Parliament and serving until 1945.
Returning to ministerial office as Financial Secretary to the War Office in 1931, then as Financial Secretary to the Treasury in 1934, he was elevated to the Cabinet as War Secretary in 1935 and promoted to First Lord of the Admiralty in 1937. He completed a biography of Douglas Haig during this period. The most public critic of Neville Chamberlain's appeasement policy inside the Cabinet, he famously resigned in 1938 over the Munich Agreement with Adolf Hitler in an act that MP Vyvyan Adams (who also opposed appeasement) described as "the first step in the road back to national sanity". He later took a prominent role in the famous Norway Debate of 1940 which led to Chamberlain's downfall.
He subsequently entered the Cabinet as Minister of Information under Winston Churchill but after a controversial appointment as Resident Cabinet Minister in Singapore in 1941, he did not play a major role in the direction of the war until appointed the British Government's liaison to the Free French in 1943. He subsequently became the British ambassador to France in 1944 and was a great success in Paris. He left office in 1947, was knighted, and devoted himself primarily to literature until his death in 1954 at the age of 63. He produced during this period the classic autobiography Old Men Forget and was eventually created Viscount Norwich, of Aldwick in the County of Sussex, in 1952 in recognition of his political and literary career. His wife refused to be called Lady Norwich, claiming that it sounded too much like "porridge" and promptly took out a newspaper advertisement declaring that she would retain her previous style of Lady Diana Cooper.
Family
Duff Cooper's only legitimate child, John Julius Norwich (born in 1929), became well known as a writer and television host and has published a collection of his father's diaries The Duff Cooper Diaries: 1915–1951. His granddaughter Artemis Cooper has published several books, including A Durable Fire: The Letters of Duff and Diana Cooper, 1913–50. Another granddaughter is screenwriter Allegra Huston, the only child of Norwich and Enrica Soma Huston, estranged wife of the American film director John Huston. Duff Cooper's niece Enid Levita (daughter of his sister Stephanie) is the paternal grandmother of the Conservative Party leader David Cameron, who became Prime Minister of the United Kingdom in 2010. Duff Cooper was the subject of a biography by John Charmley and a British literary award, the Duff Cooper Prize was established in his name.
Fictional role
H. G. Wells in The Shape of Things to Come, published in 1934, predicted a Second World War in which Britain would not participate but would vainly try to effect a peaceful compromise. In this vision, Duff Cooper was mentioned as one of several prominent Britons delivering "brilliant pacific speeches" which "echo throughout Europe" but fail to end the war (the other would-be peacemakers, in Wells' vision, included Hore Belisha, Ellen Wilkinson and Randolph Churchill).
The only son of fashionable society doctor Sir Alfred Cooper and Lady Agnes Duff (sister of Alexander Duff, 1st Duke of Fife), he was the youngest of four children and enjoyed a typical gentleman's upbringing of country estates, London society, Eton College and New College, Oxford. He had royal blood, being a descendant of King William IV and his mistress Dorothy Jordan.
Early life and marriage
At Oxford, his Eton friendship with John Manners won him entry into a famous and fashionable circle of young aristocrats and intellectuals known as The Coterie, including Patrick Shaw-Stewart, Raymond Asquith (son of the Prime Minister), Sir Denis Anson, Edward Horner and most famously Lady Diana Manners. He cultivated a reputation for eloquence and fast living and although he had established a reputation as a poet, he earned an even better reputation for gambling, womanising, and drinking in his studied emulation of the life of Charles James Fox.
Following Oxford, he entered the Foreign Service and, owing to the national importance of his work at the cipher desk, he was excluded from military service until 1917, when he joined the Grenadier Guards. He served with distinction as a lieutenant in the campaigns of 1918, winning a DSO for conspicuous gallantry. Almost all of his closest friends, including Shaw-Stewart, Horner, Asquith and John Manners were killed in the war, drawing him closer to Lady Diana Manners, whom he married in 1919. An extremely popular social figure hailed for her beauty and eccentricities, she was one of several daughters born to the Duke and Duchess of Rutland; her biological father, however, was believed to be Harry Cust, known as one of the most handsome men of his day.
The Coopers' marriage was fraught with infidelities, notably Duff's affairs with the Franco-American Singer sewing-machine heiress Daisy Fellowes, the socialite Gloria Guinness, the French novelist Louise Leveque de Vilmorin, the writer Susan Mary Alsop (then an American diplomat's wife, by whom he had an illegitimate son, William Patten Jr.), Boy Capel's wife Diana, and the Anglo-Irish socialite and fashion model Maxime de La Falaise, although Lady Diana reportedly did not mind, explaining to their son that 'They were the flowers, but I was the tree'.
Political career
Returning to the Foreign Service, he became principal private secretary to two ministers and played a significant role in the Egyptian and Turkish crises of the early 1920s before winning a seat in Parliament as a Conservative for Oldham in 1924. He gave one of the most acclaimed maiden speeches of the century and became known as a stalwart supporter of Stanley Baldwin, the Prime Minister, and a friend of Chancellor of the Exchequer, Winston Churchill. He became Financial Secretary to the War Office in January 1928 before losing his seat in the 1929 election when the Conservative Party lost power.
Turning to literature, he produced Talleyrand (1932),a short biography that was published by his nephew Rupert Hart-Davis to critical praise and lasting success. The 1931 by-election for the constituency of Westminster St George's saw the Empire Free Trade Crusade party threatening the Conservative position at a time when satisfaction with Baldwin's leadership was at a low. When the original Conservative candidate stepped down, Duff Cooper agreed to contest the election in what was regarded as a referendum on Baldwin's leadership. He won the seat with a majority of 5,710. thus returning to Parliament and serving until 1945.
Returning to ministerial office as Financial Secretary to the War Office in 1931, then as Financial Secretary to the Treasury in 1934, he was elevated to the Cabinet as War Secretary in 1935 and promoted to First Lord of the Admiralty in 1937. He completed a biography of Douglas Haig during this period. The most public critic of Neville Chamberlain's appeasement policy inside the Cabinet, he famously resigned in 1938 over the Munich Agreement with Adolf Hitler in an act that MP Vyvyan Adams (who also opposed appeasement) described as "the first step in the road back to national sanity". He later took a prominent role in the famous Norway Debate of 1940 which led to Chamberlain's downfall.
He subsequently entered the Cabinet as Minister of Information under Winston Churchill but after a controversial appointment as Resident Cabinet Minister in Singapore in 1941, he did not play a major role in the direction of the war until appointed the British Government's liaison to the Free French in 1943. He subsequently became the British ambassador to France in 1944 and was a great success in Paris. He left office in 1947, was knighted, and devoted himself primarily to literature until his death in 1954 at the age of 63. He produced during this period the classic autobiography Old Men Forget and was eventually created Viscount Norwich, of Aldwick in the County of Sussex, in 1952 in recognition of his political and literary career. His wife refused to be called Lady Norwich, claiming that it sounded too much like "porridge" and promptly took out a newspaper advertisement declaring that she would retain her previous style of Lady Diana Cooper.
Family
Duff Cooper's only legitimate child, John Julius Norwich (born in 1929), became well known as a writer and television host and has published a collection of his father's diaries The Duff Cooper Diaries: 1915–1951. His granddaughter Artemis Cooper has published several books, including A Durable Fire: The Letters of Duff and Diana Cooper, 1913–50. Another granddaughter is screenwriter Allegra Huston, the only child of Norwich and Enrica Soma Huston, estranged wife of the American film director John Huston. Duff Cooper's niece Enid Levita (daughter of his sister Stephanie) is the paternal grandmother of the Conservative Party leader David Cameron, who became Prime Minister of the United Kingdom in 2010. Duff Cooper was the subject of a biography by John Charmley and a British literary award, the Duff Cooper Prize was established in his name.
Fictional role
H. G. Wells in The Shape of Things to Come, published in 1934, predicted a Second World War in which Britain would not participate but would vainly try to effect a peaceful compromise. In this vision, Duff Cooper was mentioned as one of several prominent Britons delivering "brilliant pacific speeches" which "echo throughout Europe" but fail to end the war (the other would-be peacemakers, in Wells' vision, included Hore Belisha, Ellen Wilkinson and Randolph Churchill).
4Sakerfalcon
I read Tea with Mr Rochester last year and loved it. So sad that she didn't live to write more - but fortunate that she at least achieved as much as she did.
5bleuroses
Joan Aiken, MBE (4 September 1924 – 4 January 2004) was a popular and prolific author who infused her work with a sense that the strange and quietly terrifying live just around the corner; she wrote 92 novels - including 27 for adults - as well as plays, poems and short stories, although she was best known as a writer of charmingly quirky children's stories, notably The Wolves of Willoughby Chase (1963).
Influenced as a child by John Masefield, Mervyn Peake and by the C S Lewis trilogy Out of the Silent Planet (she hated his Narnia series), Joan Aiken created Gothic fantasy "alternate" worlds as the backdrop for unsettling and often outrageous plots notable for their dramatic force, colour and strength of imagination.
In The Wolves of Willoughby Chase, two cousins, Bonnie and Sylvia, have their ancestral home stolen from them by their evil guardian, Miss Slighcarp. Set in the bleak north country in an "alternate", but still recognisable, Victorian England in the reign of the Stuart King James III, the book won the 1965 Lewis Carroll Shelf Award and was made into a successful film in 1988.
The names of Joan Aiken's characters were indicative of her style. Some were perfectly normal, but others included Miss Hooting, a "retired enchantress"; Mrs Moleshin the cook; "assistant principal" Madame Legume; and ship's captain Jabez Casket with his first mate, Dutiful Penitence. Her writing was deadpan and direct, her characters strongly defined, personified abstractions such as those in morality plays.
But it was not just names and odd details that gave Joan Aiken's stories their distinctive charm and humour, it was their unpredictability and strange dream-like juxtapositions. A Joan Aiken story might begin with a BBC man visiting a village in the country, as in The Rose of Puddle Fratrus, and end up with an intelligent computer, a cursed ballet and a mysterious recluse. In Midnight is a Place, machines crush children to death, herds of man-eating hogs rampage in subterranean sewers and a wicked old gentleman is "charred to a wisp" in the burning remains of his ill-gotten house.
"Stories are like butterflies," she said, "which come fluttering out of nowhere, touch down for a brief instant, may be captured, may not, and then vanish into nowhere again."
Joan Aiken's prose style drew heavily on fairy tales and oral traditions in which plots are fast-moving and horror is matter-of-fact but never grotesque. Sometimes she included song lyrics and rhymes; sometimes characters speak in British dialects, or parodies thereof (as in, "Losh, to be sure, yon mountain's unco wampish.")
Notwithstanding the unpredictable quality of her plots, there were recurring elements. There are slightly scatty but independent-minded young women who end up marrying slightly scatty but charming young men. Mysterious, corridor-ridden Gothic houses figure prominently, along with a variety of curses and enchantments. And there is always a strong sense of right and wrong. When writing for children, Joan Aiken never pretended that life is easy, or that wickedness, horror and hardship do not exist; indeed, she believed it was vital for children to explore such things. At the same time, she believed that children needed the reassurance that virtue would always triumph in the end.
Joan Delano Aiken was born at Rye, Sussex, on September 4 1924 into a literary family. Her father, the American poet and writer Conrad Aiken, would win the 1930 Pulitzer Prize for his Selected Poems. Her Canadian mother, Jessie McDonald Aiken, was also an author. Her father left home when Joan was very young and, when she was five, her mother remarried. Her new stepfather was another writer, Martin Armstrong.
Joan Aiken and her elder sister were educated at home by their mother who, on top of the basic curriculum, taught them Latin, French, Spanish and German, and read them great works of literature from the family library. By the age of seven Joan was reading Edgar Allan Poe, Rudyard Kipling, and all the children's books from "Alcott to Wiggins".
Her literary upbringing would be evident in her later novels. Nightbirds on Nantucket (1966), for instance, incorporates a pastiche of Melville's Moby Dick with Captain Casket's obsessed pursuit of Rosie, the pink whale.
Alone much of the time, young Joan took solitary walks in the fields surrounding the family house, and to amuse herself she concocted stories which she began writing down from the age of five; when her younger brother grew old enough to tag along, she invented more stories to tell him when he grew tired. Both children created imaginary countries and often swapped details about their own fantasy lands. Joan incorporated some of the characters she had invented as a child in her later novels.
At the age of 12 she was sent to Wychwood, a boarding school in Oxford, where she found that, although she was far better educated than anyone else, she did not know how to socialise. Finding it difficult to make friends, she continued to write, completing her first full-length novel at the age of 16. At 18 she had her first short story accepted for publication: "The Dreamers" tells the story of a man who stews his wife in a pressure cooker.
War had broken out when Joan Aiken left school, and she found a job at the BBC filing Spanish and Portuguese letters and ruling lines on the back of index cards to save paper. In 1941 the BBC broadcast some of her short stories on their Children's Hour programme. In 1943 she moved to the reference department of the London office of the United Nations, where she collected information about resistance movements. She continued to work for the UN until 1949.
In 1945 she had married Ronald Brown, a news agency journalist with whom she had two children. Their marriage coincided with a rich story vein, and in 1953 a collection of short fiction called All You've Ever Wanted and Other Stories was published.
But while she was writing The Wolves of Willoughby Chase, which she began in 1952, her husband became ill and she put the book aside. He died in 1955.
To make ends meet, she took a job as a copy editor for Argosy magazine, then moved to J Walter Thompson, writing advertising jingles for Dairylea cheese in the day, then knocking up a couple of short stories in the evening. The advertising world would form the backdrop for a number of stories, including Trouble with Product X (1966), about a young female advertising executive who gets caught up in a deadly twist while on a photo shoot for a new product. Eventually, in 1963, she returned to and finished The Wolves of Willoughby Chase. The success of the book enabled her to give up her job in advertising and spurred her to write the second and third books in the Wolves Chronicles series: Black Hearts in Battersea (1964), in which Dido Twite makes her first appearance; and Nightbirds on Nantucket (1966). In 1969 her novel The Whispering Mountain (1968) won the Guardian Children's Book Award, and in 1972 Night Fall won America's Edgar Allan Poe Award for juvenile mystery.
Over the next 30 years Joan Aiken produced many novels, short story collections, poetry, plays and even a "how-to" book intended to guide authors for young adults, entitled The Way to Write for Children (1982).
Notable among her later books were the Arabel and Mortimer series, chronicling the adventures of Arabel and her pet raven Mortimer, who goes about saying "Nevermore!" and eating everything in sight, from pastries to clocks and staircases. The stories were adapted as a series for BBC children's television. She also wrote several "sequels", or pastiches, of Jane Austen's novels, including The Watsons, Mansfield Park and Emma.
A tiny figure with prodigious amounts of energy, Joan Aiken eschewed modern conveniences such as the computer, and always wrote her stories on an ancient typewriter. When she was not writing, she enjoyed painting and gardening at her home at Petworth, Sussex.
In 1976 she married the American painter Julius Goldstein, who predeceased her. She is survived by a son and a daughter of her first marriage.
Copied from her obituary in the The Daily Telegraph, 7 Jan 2004
Joan Aiken Website.
Crone Henge! Another great website.
Influenced as a child by John Masefield, Mervyn Peake and by the C S Lewis trilogy Out of the Silent Planet (she hated his Narnia series), Joan Aiken created Gothic fantasy "alternate" worlds as the backdrop for unsettling and often outrageous plots notable for their dramatic force, colour and strength of imagination.
In The Wolves of Willoughby Chase, two cousins, Bonnie and Sylvia, have their ancestral home stolen from them by their evil guardian, Miss Slighcarp. Set in the bleak north country in an "alternate", but still recognisable, Victorian England in the reign of the Stuart King James III, the book won the 1965 Lewis Carroll Shelf Award and was made into a successful film in 1988.
The names of Joan Aiken's characters were indicative of her style. Some were perfectly normal, but others included Miss Hooting, a "retired enchantress"; Mrs Moleshin the cook; "assistant principal" Madame Legume; and ship's captain Jabez Casket with his first mate, Dutiful Penitence. Her writing was deadpan and direct, her characters strongly defined, personified abstractions such as those in morality plays.
But it was not just names and odd details that gave Joan Aiken's stories their distinctive charm and humour, it was their unpredictability and strange dream-like juxtapositions. A Joan Aiken story might begin with a BBC man visiting a village in the country, as in The Rose of Puddle Fratrus, and end up with an intelligent computer, a cursed ballet and a mysterious recluse. In Midnight is a Place, machines crush children to death, herds of man-eating hogs rampage in subterranean sewers and a wicked old gentleman is "charred to a wisp" in the burning remains of his ill-gotten house.
"Stories are like butterflies," she said, "which come fluttering out of nowhere, touch down for a brief instant, may be captured, may not, and then vanish into nowhere again."
Joan Aiken's prose style drew heavily on fairy tales and oral traditions in which plots are fast-moving and horror is matter-of-fact but never grotesque. Sometimes she included song lyrics and rhymes; sometimes characters speak in British dialects, or parodies thereof (as in, "Losh, to be sure, yon mountain's unco wampish.")
Notwithstanding the unpredictable quality of her plots, there were recurring elements. There are slightly scatty but independent-minded young women who end up marrying slightly scatty but charming young men. Mysterious, corridor-ridden Gothic houses figure prominently, along with a variety of curses and enchantments. And there is always a strong sense of right and wrong. When writing for children, Joan Aiken never pretended that life is easy, or that wickedness, horror and hardship do not exist; indeed, she believed it was vital for children to explore such things. At the same time, she believed that children needed the reassurance that virtue would always triumph in the end.
Joan Delano Aiken was born at Rye, Sussex, on September 4 1924 into a literary family. Her father, the American poet and writer Conrad Aiken, would win the 1930 Pulitzer Prize for his Selected Poems. Her Canadian mother, Jessie McDonald Aiken, was also an author. Her father left home when Joan was very young and, when she was five, her mother remarried. Her new stepfather was another writer, Martin Armstrong.
Joan Aiken and her elder sister were educated at home by their mother who, on top of the basic curriculum, taught them Latin, French, Spanish and German, and read them great works of literature from the family library. By the age of seven Joan was reading Edgar Allan Poe, Rudyard Kipling, and all the children's books from "Alcott to Wiggins".
Her literary upbringing would be evident in her later novels. Nightbirds on Nantucket (1966), for instance, incorporates a pastiche of Melville's Moby Dick with Captain Casket's obsessed pursuit of Rosie, the pink whale.
Alone much of the time, young Joan took solitary walks in the fields surrounding the family house, and to amuse herself she concocted stories which she began writing down from the age of five; when her younger brother grew old enough to tag along, she invented more stories to tell him when he grew tired. Both children created imaginary countries and often swapped details about their own fantasy lands. Joan incorporated some of the characters she had invented as a child in her later novels.
At the age of 12 she was sent to Wychwood, a boarding school in Oxford, where she found that, although she was far better educated than anyone else, she did not know how to socialise. Finding it difficult to make friends, she continued to write, completing her first full-length novel at the age of 16. At 18 she had her first short story accepted for publication: "The Dreamers" tells the story of a man who stews his wife in a pressure cooker.
War had broken out when Joan Aiken left school, and she found a job at the BBC filing Spanish and Portuguese letters and ruling lines on the back of index cards to save paper. In 1941 the BBC broadcast some of her short stories on their Children's Hour programme. In 1943 she moved to the reference department of the London office of the United Nations, where she collected information about resistance movements. She continued to work for the UN until 1949.
In 1945 she had married Ronald Brown, a news agency journalist with whom she had two children. Their marriage coincided with a rich story vein, and in 1953 a collection of short fiction called All You've Ever Wanted and Other Stories was published.
But while she was writing The Wolves of Willoughby Chase, which she began in 1952, her husband became ill and she put the book aside. He died in 1955.
To make ends meet, she took a job as a copy editor for Argosy magazine, then moved to J Walter Thompson, writing advertising jingles for Dairylea cheese in the day, then knocking up a couple of short stories in the evening. The advertising world would form the backdrop for a number of stories, including Trouble with Product X (1966), about a young female advertising executive who gets caught up in a deadly twist while on a photo shoot for a new product. Eventually, in 1963, she returned to and finished The Wolves of Willoughby Chase. The success of the book enabled her to give up her job in advertising and spurred her to write the second and third books in the Wolves Chronicles series: Black Hearts in Battersea (1964), in which Dido Twite makes her first appearance; and Nightbirds on Nantucket (1966). In 1969 her novel The Whispering Mountain (1968) won the Guardian Children's Book Award, and in 1972 Night Fall won America's Edgar Allan Poe Award for juvenile mystery.
Over the next 30 years Joan Aiken produced many novels, short story collections, poetry, plays and even a "how-to" book intended to guide authors for young adults, entitled The Way to Write for Children (1982).
Notable among her later books were the Arabel and Mortimer series, chronicling the adventures of Arabel and her pet raven Mortimer, who goes about saying "Nevermore!" and eating everything in sight, from pastries to clocks and staircases. The stories were adapted as a series for BBC children's television. She also wrote several "sequels", or pastiches, of Jane Austen's novels, including The Watsons, Mansfield Park and Emma.
A tiny figure with prodigious amounts of energy, Joan Aiken eschewed modern conveniences such as the computer, and always wrote her stories on an ancient typewriter. When she was not writing, she enjoyed painting and gardening at her home at Petworth, Sussex.
In 1976 she married the American painter Julius Goldstein, who predeceased her. She is survived by a son and a daughter of her first marriage.
Copied from her obituary in the The Daily Telegraph, 7 Jan 2004
Joan Aiken Website.
Crone Henge! Another great website.
6gennyt
#5 One of my very favourite authors! I've been delighted to discover through LT that she wrote far more than the few I read and loved in childhood, and have been slowly reading more of hers over the past couple of years. I haven't tried any of her books written for adults yet, though I have a couple of the Austen pastiches on my TBR pile.
7Sakerfalcon
Now I want to reread the James III books!
Thanks for the Crone Henge link - what a wonderful site, if it is all like the page you linked to. I appreciated Aiken's quote on children's literature :
"Adult books tend to be for entertainment … whereas children, when they read, are reading to learn about life, unconsciously. Or they should be."
It annoys me when I hear or read a line like "Well, it wasn't a very good book, but it's only for children so it's okay that it was second rate." It's like food - surely we should give only the best to children while they are growing. Time enough for them to discover junk later.
*Climbs down from soapbox*
Thanks for the Crone Henge link - what a wonderful site, if it is all like the page you linked to. I appreciated Aiken's quote on children's literature :
"Adult books tend to be for entertainment … whereas children, when they read, are reading to learn about life, unconsciously. Or they should be."
It annoys me when I hear or read a line like "Well, it wasn't a very good book, but it's only for children so it's okay that it was second rate." It's like food - surely we should give only the best to children while they are growing. Time enough for them to discover junk later.
*Climbs down from soapbox*
8miss_read
The Whispering Mountain was a childhood favourite of mine.
9alexdaw
loved loved loved Joan Aiken when I was growing up - Wolves of Willoughby Chase and The Whispering Mountain definitely. It's interesting - I didn't realise that we had so many in our collection - Robbie must have collected a few over the years liking horror, fantasy, ghosty type stories. I haven't catalogued my favourite hard cover of The Whispering Mountain though - silly me. On opening it I discovered my cat bookplate in the front and the borrowing record Due Date slip in the back from 1974 when at the age of 13, I ran my own personal borrowing library!! Would post photos but can't find the wretched batteries for my camera...will add that to the list of 19 things to do today and so far I have done NONE!! Just read blogs....enjoyable though.
10alexdaw
And the Crone Henge blog is very good isn't it? Took me a while to "get" the title - I haven't had my coffee yet this morning. And I now have a lovely new screensaver image thingy courtesy of the Joan Aiken website. Thanks!
11bleuroses
Margaret Storm Jameson was born in Whitby on 8 January 1891. Her father and grandfather were successful shipbuilders. She studied at University of Leeds and was elected Secretary of the Women's Representative Council.
Jameson became a socialist at university and was a strong advocate of women having the vote. She also raised funds for the families of union members who took part in the strike that took place in the tailoring industry in Leeds in 1911.
After obtaining a first-class degree in English at the University of Leeds she moved to London in September 1912 and found employment at the Working Women's College in Earls Court. She wrote later that: "I believe that there exists in the intellect of the working class a vigour and freshness that may well bring forth a new Renaissance. For generations crushed under the industrial slavery, I believe that it will move when it does move, with a mighty bound."
Jameson became active in politics and joined the National Union of Women Suffrage Societies(NUWSS). In 1913 she took part in the Women's Pilgrimage to show the House of Commons how many women wanted the vote. Members of the NUWSS set off in the middle of June, and during the next six weeks held a series of meetings all over Britain. An estimated 50,000 women reached Hyde Park in London on 26th July. According to her autobiography, she bit a policeman, during the demonstration.
On 15th January 1913, Jameson married Charles Douglas Clarke, a fellow student at University of Leeds. They lived in a small flat in Shepherd's Bush. According to the author of Margaret Storm Jameson: A Life (2009): "They were very poor, she lunched regularly on plums, and they squabbled bitterly. She tried to commit suicide with an overdose of phenacetin, and he was deeply unsympathetic. She fell ill at the end of the year and went home to her parents in Whitby, while he moved in with his Quaker parents in North London."
Jameson had two articles published in New Age. The first was an attack on the work of George Bernard Shaw. She criticised his plays for their "poor characterisation" and for the "half-baked ideas" that had come from his membership of the Fabian Society. The second article dealt with the unfairness of marriage laws. Jameson also wrote an article for The Egoist that explored the political ideas of Emma Goldman.
Soon after the outbreak of the First World War, Storm Jameson's father joined the Royal Navy and became captain of the Saxon Prince. In the spring of 1916 the ship was sunk off the Irish coast and Jameson was taken prisoner and sent to a military camp at Hamburg.
Her brother, Harold Jameson, although only seventeen, joined the Royal Flying Corps. By 1916 he was a 2nd Lieutenant and had been given the DCM: "for conspicuous coolness and gallantry on several occasions in connection with wireless work under fire." Later that year he won the Military Cross for attacking a German kite balloon under heavy fire. He was killed in January 1917 after being shot down while over No Man's Land.
As Martin Ceadel, the author of Pacifism in Britain 1914-1945 (1980) has pointed out: "Her sense of outrage at the Great War in which so many of her contemporaries, including her brother, had been killed suddenly erupted into overt pacifism... Brooding upon the depressing consequences of the war, she felt an acute sense of guilt at having supported it, and turned her book into an outspoken anti-war polemic.... By the end she had gone so far as to declare herself a pacifist." After the war she joined the Women's International League. Other members included Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence, Chrystal Macmillan, Sylvia Pankhurst, Charlotte Despard, Helen Crawfurd, Mary Barbour, Agnes Dollan, Ethel Snowden, Ellen Wilkinson, Selina Cooper, Margery Corbett-Ashby, Helena Swanwick and Olive Schreiner.
Her first novel, The Pot Boils, was published in 1919. Her marriage to Charles Douglas Clarke came to an end and in January 1924 she met Guy Chapman. He later commented: "She was wearing a heavy coat over a faded pink knitted dress, and a hat which did not suit her, and she smiled at me. She was rather lovely, with long cool grubby fingers, and she held herself badly: she made me think of a well-bred foal, unbroken and enchantingly awkward. Something she said at that first meeting, I forget what, made me laugh with pure pleasure."
They soon began a relationship. The couple married on 1st February 1926. Later she wrote: "We went to places, obscure ruined monasteries, small provincial art galleries, the house in which a dead philosopher spent his life, salt marshes, trout streams, some turn in a rough nameless road which offered a view of a smiling valley and a line of hills, because, although he had not seen them, he knew they were there. He made all other company a little dull."
Storm Jameson continued to write novels, including a trilogy about a family of Yorkshire shipbuilders: The Lovely Ship (1927), The Voyage Home (1930) and A Richer Dust (1931). Other books include Women Against Men (1933), Company Parade (1934), Love in Winter (1935), and None Turn Back (1936). Jameson also published poems, essays, biographies and several volumes of autobiography including No Time Like the Present (1933).
In September 1932 Storm Jameson became close friends with Vera Brittain. The two women had both lost brothers during the First World War and as a result became committed pacifists. Jameson reviewed Testament of Youth in the Sunday Times and said that as a representation of war from a woman's perspective "makes it unforgettable".
Storm Jameson became involved with the British section of the International Union of Revolutionary Writers. At a meeting in January 1934 it was decided to publish a new Marxist journal. The Left Review first appeared in October 1934. Contributors included Storm Jameson, Edgell Rickword, Tom Wintringham, Ralph Fox, John Strachey, Sylvia Townsend Warner, Montagu Slater, A.L. Lloyd, Hugh MacDiarmid,Amabel Williams-Ellis, A. L. Morton, Nancy Cunard, F. D. Kingender, Valentine Ackland, W.H. Auden, Stephen Spender, Edward Upward, Cecil Day-Lewis, Randall Swingler, Jack Lindsay, Margaret Storm Jameson, Naomi Mitchison, Winifred Holtby, Henry Hamilton Fyfe, Eric Gill, Herbert Read and George Barker.
On 7 July, 1934, the British Union of Fascists held a large rally at Olympia. About 500 anti-fascists including Storm Jameson, Vera Brittain, Richard Sheppard and Aldous Huxley, managed to get inside the hall. When they began heckling Oswald Mosley they were attacked by 1,000 black-shirted stewards. Several of the protesters were badly beaten by the fascists. Jameson argued in The Daily Telegraph: "A young woman carried past me by five Blackshirts, her clothes half torn off and her mouth and nose closed by the large hand of one; her head was forced back by the pressure and she must have been in considerable pain. I mention her especially since I have seen a reference to the delicacy with which women interrupters were left to women Blackshirts. This is merely untrue... Why train decent young men to indulge in such peculiarly nasty brutality? There was a public outcry about this violence and Lord Rothermere and his Daily Mail withdrew its support of the BUF. Over the next few months membership went into decline.
Jameson also became friendly with Richard Sheppard, a canon of St. Paul's Cathedral. He had been an army chaplain during the First World War. A committed pacifist, he was concerned by the failure of the major nations to agree to international disarmament and on 16th October 1934, he had a letter published in the Manchester Guardian inviting men to send him a postcard giving their undertaking to "renounce war and never again to support another." Within two days 2,500 men responded and over the next few weeks around 30,000 pledged their support for Sheppard's campaign.
In July 1935 Sheppard chaired a meeting of 7,000 members of his new organization at the Albert Hall in London. Eventually named the Peace Pledge Union (PPU), it achieved 100,000 members over the next few months. The organization now included other prominent religious, political and literary figures including Storm Jameson, Arthur Ponsonby, George Lansbury, Vera Brittain, Wilfred Wellock, Max Plowman, Maude Royden, Frank P. Crozier, Alfred Salter, Ada Salter, Siegfried Sassoon, Donald Soper,Aldous Huxley,Laurence Housman and Bertrand Russell.
Jameson was also concerned with the emergence of Adolf Hitler in Nazi Germany. In an article for Time and Tide on 6th June, 1936 she called for the Labour Party to work with the Communist Party of Great Britain to create a Popular Front movement. "The reanimation of the Labour Party - by (1) a change in its constitution. The statement that the Labour Party is ruled by the Trade Unions is delusive. As constituted, it is ruled by a narrow oligarchy of Trade Union leaders, as much out of touch with their rank and file as is the executive of the Labour Party with the Party rank and file. (2) An alliance, on the basis of an exactly defined programme, with the progressive Liberals, I.L.P. and Communist Party, as distinct from a shabby vote-catching agreement between leaders - is a preliminary step towards the only form of Popular Front worth voting for. Apart from a People's Front, what indeed is there to hope for in the political future? And without it, what hope of averting the eventual triumph of reaction by the default of the Labour Party?"
Storm Jameson remained a member of Peace Pledge Union until Adolf Hitler ordered the invasion of France in May 1940. She wrote: "I had joined Dick Shepherd when he started it, in October 1934. Then, I was absolutely certain that war is viler than anything else imaginable... I don't think that now."
Jameson published a second volume of autobiography, Journey from the North in 1969. For many years Jameson was president of the International Association of Poets, Playwrights, Editors, Essayists and Novelists (PEN).
After her husband's death on 30th June 1972, Storm Jameson edited "A Kind of Survivor" (1975), a selection of Chapman's autobiographical writings.
Storm Jameson died in 1986.
12bleuroses
Barbara Euphan Todd (9 January 1890 – 2 February 1976) was a British writer, most notable for her children's books about the scarecrow Worzel Gummidge.
Todd was born in Doncaster, South Yorkshire, the only child of Anglican minister Thomas Todd and Alice Maud Mary (née Bentham), but was brought up in the rural village of Soberton in Hampshire. She was educated at a girls' school in Guildford in Surrey. She worked as a VAD during World War I, and after her father's retirement lived with her parents in Surrey and began writing. Her early work was published in magazines such as Punch and The Spectator.
In the 1920s, she started writing books for children and collaborated with her husband Commander John Graham Bower, RN (1886–1940), whom she married in 1932. The couple moved to an artistic colony in Blewbury near Oxford, where Bower, an officer in the Royal Navy, wrote fiction and essays under the pseudonym 'Klaxon'.
As Barbara Euphan, in 1935 Todd wrote South Country Secrets and "The Touchstone" with her husband. In 1946, after the death of her husband in World War II, she wrote her only adult novel, Miss Ranskill Comes Home (1946), about a woman who returns to England after being stranded on a desert island during the war. It was reissued in 2003 by Persephone Books. Among other works written by Todd were folkstories adapted for radio, plays and stories written in collaboration with other writers, and two volumes of poetry, "Hither and Thither" (1927) and "The Seventh Daughter" (1935).
In 1936 she wrote what would become her best known-work, Worzel Gummidge or The Scarecrow of Scatterbrook. The title character is a scarecrow that comes to life. She would later write nine other books featuring the character.
In the 1950s Denis and Mabel Constanduros collaborated with Todd on a series of Worzel Gummidge radio plays for children. In 1967 five Worzel Gummidge stories were narrated by Gordon Rollings in five episodes of the BBC children's serial Jackanory. Todd continued to write novels into the 1970s, but her best work was by then behind her. She died in 1976, just as negotiations were in progress for the television rights to the Worzel Gummidge books.
Her stepdaughter, Mrs. Ursula Betts (née Bower), the wife of Frederick Nicholson Betts, remembered her as "warm and kind" but recalled mainly her "dry- and sometimes wry - sense of humour," the earmark of her Worzel Gummidge books.
A Poem By Barbara Euphan Todd
Ye Scairey-crows of dry-land,
Your little fields have bounds,
Come sail with me and you shall see,
The sun upon his rounds.
The sea-flowers bloom year out,year in,
The Plough is in the sky.
As you sail, as you sail,
And the time goes passing by,
And you will forget the fields you knew
As the times goes passing by.
Todd was born in Doncaster, South Yorkshire, the only child of Anglican minister Thomas Todd and Alice Maud Mary (née Bentham), but was brought up in the rural village of Soberton in Hampshire. She was educated at a girls' school in Guildford in Surrey. She worked as a VAD during World War I, and after her father's retirement lived with her parents in Surrey and began writing. Her early work was published in magazines such as Punch and The Spectator.
In the 1920s, she started writing books for children and collaborated with her husband Commander John Graham Bower, RN (1886–1940), whom she married in 1932. The couple moved to an artistic colony in Blewbury near Oxford, where Bower, an officer in the Royal Navy, wrote fiction and essays under the pseudonym 'Klaxon'.
As Barbara Euphan, in 1935 Todd wrote South Country Secrets and "The Touchstone" with her husband. In 1946, after the death of her husband in World War II, she wrote her only adult novel, Miss Ranskill Comes Home (1946), about a woman who returns to England after being stranded on a desert island during the war. It was reissued in 2003 by Persephone Books. Among other works written by Todd were folkstories adapted for radio, plays and stories written in collaboration with other writers, and two volumes of poetry, "Hither and Thither" (1927) and "The Seventh Daughter" (1935).
In 1936 she wrote what would become her best known-work, Worzel Gummidge or The Scarecrow of Scatterbrook. The title character is a scarecrow that comes to life. She would later write nine other books featuring the character.
In the 1950s Denis and Mabel Constanduros collaborated with Todd on a series of Worzel Gummidge radio plays for children. In 1967 five Worzel Gummidge stories were narrated by Gordon Rollings in five episodes of the BBC children's serial Jackanory. Todd continued to write novels into the 1970s, but her best work was by then behind her. She died in 1976, just as negotiations were in progress for the television rights to the Worzel Gummidge books.
Her stepdaughter, Mrs. Ursula Betts (née Bower), the wife of Frederick Nicholson Betts, remembered her as "warm and kind" but recalled mainly her "dry- and sometimes wry - sense of humour," the earmark of her Worzel Gummidge books.
A Poem By Barbara Euphan Todd
Ye Scairey-crows of dry-land,
Your little fields have bounds,
Come sail with me and you shall see,
The sun upon his rounds.
The sea-flowers bloom year out,year in,
The Plough is in the sky.
As you sail, as you sail,
And the time goes passing by,
And you will forget the fields you knew
As the times goes passing by.
13miss_read
Worzel Gummidge was the first real grown-up book (i.e., paperback book as opposed to picture book) I ever read. And I believe South Country Secrets was next after I'd worked my way through Winnie the Pooh! My mother was a real Euphan Todd fan.
14juliette07
Lovely remembrance of Storm Jameson.
Reading about Euphan Todd made me giggle as we live about four miles from aforementioned Blewbury village!
'The couple moved to an artistic colony in Blewbury near Oxford '
Reading about Euphan Todd made me giggle as we live about four miles from aforementioned Blewbury village!
'The couple moved to an artistic colony in Blewbury near Oxford '
15parmaviolet
When I was in kindergarten I read Euphan Todd's Mr Blossom's shop, and I recently bought an old hardback copy of it, in a spirit of nostalgia.
16bleuroses
Not to be neglectful here but I've been a little busy lately with the new Virago Modern Classics Readers Page on FB. There are now 63 'likes' which happily include Lynne Hatwell (dovegreyreader) and the author Stella Duffy! Way to go, Laura, for setting up another cozy Virago meeting place!
17lauralkeet
And many thanks to you, Cate, for being my partner in Facebook page administration!
18kdcdavis
I just read your remembrance of Joan Aiken--I didn't realize that she had written the Arabel and Mortimer stories! One of them was serialized in Cricket magazine many years ago, before I subscribed to it (our library had a shelf of old back issues). I often think of Mortimer, since he was such a memorable character, and am pleased to be able to look for the books now. Thank you for making the connection for me!
20bleuroses
It's the birthday of novelist Edith Wharton, born Edith Newbold Jones in New York City (1862) The Joneses were wealthy New York society — that's where the expression "Keeping up with the Joneses" comes from. They were alarmed by their little girl, who was precocious; she taught herself to read, and wrote her first novel on brown wrapping paper when she was 11 years old. When Wharton was 14, she wrote her second novel, called Fast and Loose, a parody of British romances. When she was 18, five of her poems were published anonymously in The Atlantic Monthly. But then, at the age of 18, she stopped writing for almost 10 years. Instead, she lived the life of a rich young lady — first as a debutante; then as a young wife, married to Teddy Wharton, a wealthy man who had almost nothing in common with her.
She loved motorcars, especially fast ones, she loved dogs — especially small dogs — she liked to knit, she was passionate about design and she loathed the Victorian style she had grown up with: cluttered, dark, heavy drapes and fancy upholstered furniture. And she loved to write.
In 1905, she published The House of Mirth, the story of the socialite Lily Bart, raised as a proper young woman, without any job skills, and so after her parents' death, her only hope is to marry a rich man. She can't bring herself to marry someone she doesn't love, and because of this she ends up friendless and poor. It's a tragic story, and it was the best-selling book of the year.
Edith Wharton went on to write more popular novels, including Ethan Frome (1911) and The Age of Innocence (1920).
Copied from The Writer's Almanac
21bleuroses
Hedwig (Vicki) Baum (January 24, 1888 – August 29, 1960) was an Austrian writer. She is known for Menschen im Hotel ("People at a Hotel", 1929 - also known as "Grand Hotel"), one of her first international successes.
Baum was born in Vienna into a Jewish family. She began her artistic career as a musician playing the harp. She studied at the Vienna Conservatory and played in an orchestra in Germany for three years. She later worked as a journalist for the magazine Berliner Illustrierte Zeitung, published by Ullstein-Verlag in Berlin. She was married twice: first, from 1914, to Max Prels, an Austrian journalist who introduced her to the Viennese cultural scene; and, from 1916, to Richard Lert, a conductor and her best friend since their childhood days. Richard was the brother of stage director Ernst Lert. During World War I she worked for a short time as a nurse.
Baum began writing in her teens. Her first book, Frühe Schatten, was published when she was 31. She is most famous for her 1929 novel Menschen im Hotel which was made into an Academy Award winning film, Grand Hotel. She emigrated to the United States with her family after being invited to write the screenplay for the film. Her literary works were banned in the Third Reich. She became an American citizen in 1938. Her memoir, It Was All Quite Different, was published posthumously in 1964. She wrote more than 50 novels, and at least ten were adapted as motion pictures in Hollywood. Her post-World War II works were written in English, rather than in German.
Baum visited Bali in 1935 and became close friends with Walter Spies. With historical and cultural input from Spies, she wrote Liebe und Tod auf Bali (A Tale from Bali) which was published in (1937) and later republished in English as "Love and Death in Bali". The book was about a family that was caught in the massacre in Bali in 1906 at the fall of the last independent kingdom in Bali to the Dutch.
Vicki Baum died of leukemia in Hollywood, California, in 1960.
Vicki Baum is considered one of the first modern bestselling authors, and her books are reputed to be among the first examples of contemporary mainstream literature.
Baum was born in Vienna into a Jewish family. She began her artistic career as a musician playing the harp. She studied at the Vienna Conservatory and played in an orchestra in Germany for three years. She later worked as a journalist for the magazine Berliner Illustrierte Zeitung, published by Ullstein-Verlag in Berlin. She was married twice: first, from 1914, to Max Prels, an Austrian journalist who introduced her to the Viennese cultural scene; and, from 1916, to Richard Lert, a conductor and her best friend since their childhood days. Richard was the brother of stage director Ernst Lert. During World War I she worked for a short time as a nurse.
Baum began writing in her teens. Her first book, Frühe Schatten, was published when she was 31. She is most famous for her 1929 novel Menschen im Hotel which was made into an Academy Award winning film, Grand Hotel. She emigrated to the United States with her family after being invited to write the screenplay for the film. Her literary works were banned in the Third Reich. She became an American citizen in 1938. Her memoir, It Was All Quite Different, was published posthumously in 1964. She wrote more than 50 novels, and at least ten were adapted as motion pictures in Hollywood. Her post-World War II works were written in English, rather than in German.
Baum visited Bali in 1935 and became close friends with Walter Spies. With historical and cultural input from Spies, she wrote Liebe und Tod auf Bali (A Tale from Bali) which was published in (1937) and later republished in English as "Love and Death in Bali". The book was about a family that was caught in the massacre in Bali in 1906 at the fall of the last independent kingdom in Bali to the Dutch.
Vicki Baum died of leukemia in Hollywood, California, in 1960.
Vicki Baum is considered one of the first modern bestselling authors, and her books are reputed to be among the first examples of contemporary mainstream literature.
22europhile
#20 That makes Edith Wharton 150 this year - do you know if this is being commemorated in any way?
23bleuroses
It certainly is, Grant! Here are just a few...
dovegreyreader
randomjottings
Frisbeebookjournal
Edith Wharton's 'The Mount'
The Wharton Salon.
dovegreyreader
randomjottings
Frisbeebookjournal
Edith Wharton's 'The Mount'
The Wharton Salon.
24bleuroses
Natalie Clifford Barney (October 31, 1876 – February 2, 1972) was an American playwright, poet and novelist who lived as an expatriate in Paris.
Barney's salon was held at her home on Paris' Left Bank for more than 60 years and brought together writers and artists from around the world, including many leading figures in French literature along with American and British Modernists of the Lost Generation. She worked to promote writing by women and formed a "Women's Academy" in response to the all-male French Academy while also giving support and inspiration to male writers from Remy de Gourmont to Truman Capote.
She was openly lesbian and began publishing love poems to women under her own name as early as 1900, considering scandal as "the best way of getting rid of nuisances" (meaning heterosexual attention from young males). In her writings she supported feminism and pacifism. She opposed monogamy and had many overlapping long and short-term relationships, including on-and-off romances with poet Renée Vivien and dancer Armen Ohanian and a 50-year relationship with painter Romaine Brooks. Her life and love affairs served as inspiration for many novels, ranging from the salacious French bestseller "Sapphic Idyll" to The Well of Loneliness, arguably the most famous lesbian novel of the 20th century.
Read more about Natalie Barney HERE
Barney's salon was held at her home on Paris' Left Bank for more than 60 years and brought together writers and artists from around the world, including many leading figures in French literature along with American and British Modernists of the Lost Generation. She worked to promote writing by women and formed a "Women's Academy" in response to the all-male French Academy while also giving support and inspiration to male writers from Remy de Gourmont to Truman Capote.
She was openly lesbian and began publishing love poems to women under her own name as early as 1900, considering scandal as "the best way of getting rid of nuisances" (meaning heterosexual attention from young males). In her writings she supported feminism and pacifism. She opposed monogamy and had many overlapping long and short-term relationships, including on-and-off romances with poet Renée Vivien and dancer Armen Ohanian and a 50-year relationship with painter Romaine Brooks. Her life and love affairs served as inspiration for many novels, ranging from the salacious French bestseller "Sapphic Idyll" to The Well of Loneliness, arguably the most famous lesbian novel of the 20th century.
Read more about Natalie Barney HERE
26drmarymccormack
I think I had that hair-do in the Farrah years!
28bleuroses
Frances Catherine Partridge CBE (née Marshall; 15 March 1900 – 5 February 2004) was a long-lived member of the Bloomsbury Group and a writer, probably best known for the publication of her diaries. She married Ralph Partridge (1894 – 30 November 1960) in 1933.
Born in Bedford Square in London, she was the youngest of six children of William Marshall, an English architect. She lived in the square until she was eight when her father retired and they moved to the countryside. She was educated at Bedales School and Newnham College, Cambridge.
Bloomsbury
Working at a London bookshop owned by David Garnett and Francis Birrell, she became acquainted with Lytton Strachey, Dora Carrington and Ralph Partridge. In 1921, Ralph Partridge had married Dora Carrington, who was in love with Lytton Strachey, a homosexual who was himself more interested in Ralph Partridge. An added complication was Dora Carrington’s intermittent affair with one of Ralph Partridge’s best friends, Gerald Brenan. Carrington, Partridge, and Strachey shared a Wiltshire farm-house, Ham Spray, in a complex triangular relationship that was recorded in the 1995 film Carrington, with Alex Kingston playing Frances.
Ralph Partridge now fell in love with Frances. They lived in London during the week and repaired to Ham Spray at weekends. After Dora Carrington committed suicide out of grief in 1932, shortly after Lytton Strachey’s death, Ralph and Frances married on 2 March 1933. They lived happily at Ham Spray until Ralph’s death in 1960.
They had one son, (Lytton) Burgo Partridge, who was born in 1935 and named for Strachey. In 1962, Burgo married Henrietta Garnett, daughter of Angelica Garnett and David Garnett, with Henrietta already pregnant with their daughter. Sadly, he died suddenly of heart failure on 7 September 1963, only three weeks after the birth of their baby, Sophie Vanessa. He had already been noticed for his writing ability, and had published one well-received book, A History of Orgies (1958).
Frances sold Ham Spray and moved to London. Her writings, her membership of the Bloomsbury circle, her great personal charm and the energy that she retained into extreme old age together ensured for her a degree of celebrity towards the end of her life.
She was awarded the Commander of the Order of the British Empire in the Millennium New Year Honours.
Born in Bedford Square in London, she was the youngest of six children of William Marshall, an English architect. She lived in the square until she was eight when her father retired and they moved to the countryside. She was educated at Bedales School and Newnham College, Cambridge.
Bloomsbury
Working at a London bookshop owned by David Garnett and Francis Birrell, she became acquainted with Lytton Strachey, Dora Carrington and Ralph Partridge. In 1921, Ralph Partridge had married Dora Carrington, who was in love with Lytton Strachey, a homosexual who was himself more interested in Ralph Partridge. An added complication was Dora Carrington’s intermittent affair with one of Ralph Partridge’s best friends, Gerald Brenan. Carrington, Partridge, and Strachey shared a Wiltshire farm-house, Ham Spray, in a complex triangular relationship that was recorded in the 1995 film Carrington, with Alex Kingston playing Frances.
Ralph Partridge now fell in love with Frances. They lived in London during the week and repaired to Ham Spray at weekends. After Dora Carrington committed suicide out of grief in 1932, shortly after Lytton Strachey’s death, Ralph and Frances married on 2 March 1933. They lived happily at Ham Spray until Ralph’s death in 1960.
They had one son, (Lytton) Burgo Partridge, who was born in 1935 and named for Strachey. In 1962, Burgo married Henrietta Garnett, daughter of Angelica Garnett and David Garnett, with Henrietta already pregnant with their daughter. Sadly, he died suddenly of heart failure on 7 September 1963, only three weeks after the birth of their baby, Sophie Vanessa. He had already been noticed for his writing ability, and had published one well-received book, A History of Orgies (1958).
Frances sold Ham Spray and moved to London. Her writings, her membership of the Bloomsbury circle, her great personal charm and the energy that she retained into extreme old age together ensured for her a degree of celebrity towards the end of her life.
She was awarded the Commander of the Order of the British Empire in the Millennium New Year Honours.
29bleuroses
Eliza Parsons (née Phelp) (1739 – 5 February 1811) was an English gothic novelist. Her most famous novels in this genre are The Castle of Wolfenbach (1793) and The Mysterious Warning (1796) - two of the seven gothic titles recommended as reading by a character in Jane Austen's novel Northanger Abbey.
Many different speculations have been made regarding the life of Eliza Parsons. Most researchers do agree, however, that the author was born in the year 1739. Parsons’s baptismal certificate is dated April 4, 1739.
Eliza was born in Plymouth, England as an only daughter to John and Roberta Phelp. John was a middle-class wine merchant. Eliza spent her childhood in a prosperous household and became well-educated for a young woman in the 18th century. Around 21 years old, Eliza married a turpentine distiller, Mr. James Parsons, from the near-by town of Stonehouse. Their marriage certificate dated March 24, 1760. Together they had 3 sons and 5 daughters. In the years of 1778-79, James, Eliza, and their children moved from their home in Stonehouse to a suburb in London when Mr. Parsons’ turpentine business saw a decline as an indirect result of the American War of Independence. In London, Mr. Parsons invested his remaining money into reviving his dwindling turpentine trade. For approximately three years, the Parsons family’s quality of life returned to the pre-American Revolution level. In 1782 a devastating fire broke out in one of Parsons’ warehouses; it spread quickly and destroyed everything he owned. Mr. Parsons was then obliged to relinquish his business and take a position in the Lord Chamberlain’s office at St. James’s. Several months prior to the warehouse fire, the Parsons’ eldest son died in Jamaica, immediately following his promotion to Captain of the Royal Marines.
Domestic bereavement coupled with reverses in his economic fortune combined with Mr. Parsons’ deteriorating health and he suffered a paralyzing stroke. Mr. Parsons lived for three more years until he died in 1790 after suffering a second stroke. Eliza’s second eldest son also died in the military. In 1803, one of her daughters died, and in 1804 her youngest son passed.
Left alone with a family to provide for, Eliza picked up a pen and began to write novels in order to support her large family. Between 1790 - 1807, over the course of her career Eliza Parsons wrote 19 novels and 1 play, all of which were contained in 60 volumes. Parsons, however, was continually short of money. Between 1793 and 1803 she received 45 guineas from the Royal Literary Fund and also worked at the Royal Wardrobe. She died on 5 February 1811 at the age of 72 in Leytonstone in Essex, leaving behind four married daughters.
The Female Gothic Writer
Parsons turned to Gothic writing because it was popular at the time. Critics often claimed her works were not well-written and lacked organization. After losing her husband, Parsons had to support her family, so she turned to writing. She produced a lot of novels in a short amount of years, which is why critics claimed there would be inevitable errors in her stories. Parsons was a deeply religious Protestant. She believed in the good being rewarded and the wicked being punished, which shows through in her works.
In the year 1790, the same year as her husband’s death, Parsons published her first novel, The History of Miss Meredith. Parsons published The Castle of Wolfenbach in 1793. This was during the second half of the 18th century when England and France were starting to move away from the idea of arranged marriages. Society was leaning toward the idea of marrying freely for love. Parsons portrays this idea through The Castle of Wolfenbach along with the belief of a strong patriarchal family and respect toward the middle-class rather than aristocracy.
Some other novels of Parsons included Women as They Are (1797) and The Valley of St. Gothard (1799). Parsons shows female Gothic writing characteristics by having a heroine sort of trick her way into an inheritance while pretending to be vulnerable and innocent all the while. Parsons assisted in developing the “international” Gothic: the political outlook being part liberal and part conservative. Two of Parsons’s novels, The Castle of Wolfenbach and The Mysterious Warning (1796), were named as part of the “horrid romances” Catherine Morland recommends to Isabella Thorpe in chapter six of Jane Austin’s Northanger Abbey. The seven titles Austin referenced in her novel were thought to be fictitious until December 1912. Critics suggest Austin named these specific titles due to the fact Austin thought they were the worst of the genre. Critics proclaim it is no accident Radcliffe’s works were not named, and two of Parsons’s were. Many of Parsons’s novels had prefaces that would seem to invite sympathy from the readers towards her unfortunate situation and to excuse her lack of talent. The Castle of Wolfenbach and The Mysterious Warning had too clumsy and convenient happy endings for critics.
Bibliography
From Wikipedia
Many different speculations have been made regarding the life of Eliza Parsons. Most researchers do agree, however, that the author was born in the year 1739. Parsons’s baptismal certificate is dated April 4, 1739.
Eliza was born in Plymouth, England as an only daughter to John and Roberta Phelp. John was a middle-class wine merchant. Eliza spent her childhood in a prosperous household and became well-educated for a young woman in the 18th century. Around 21 years old, Eliza married a turpentine distiller, Mr. James Parsons, from the near-by town of Stonehouse. Their marriage certificate dated March 24, 1760. Together they had 3 sons and 5 daughters. In the years of 1778-79, James, Eliza, and their children moved from their home in Stonehouse to a suburb in London when Mr. Parsons’ turpentine business saw a decline as an indirect result of the American War of Independence. In London, Mr. Parsons invested his remaining money into reviving his dwindling turpentine trade. For approximately three years, the Parsons family’s quality of life returned to the pre-American Revolution level. In 1782 a devastating fire broke out in one of Parsons’ warehouses; it spread quickly and destroyed everything he owned. Mr. Parsons was then obliged to relinquish his business and take a position in the Lord Chamberlain’s office at St. James’s. Several months prior to the warehouse fire, the Parsons’ eldest son died in Jamaica, immediately following his promotion to Captain of the Royal Marines.
Domestic bereavement coupled with reverses in his economic fortune combined with Mr. Parsons’ deteriorating health and he suffered a paralyzing stroke. Mr. Parsons lived for three more years until he died in 1790 after suffering a second stroke. Eliza’s second eldest son also died in the military. In 1803, one of her daughters died, and in 1804 her youngest son passed.
Left alone with a family to provide for, Eliza picked up a pen and began to write novels in order to support her large family. Between 1790 - 1807, over the course of her career Eliza Parsons wrote 19 novels and 1 play, all of which were contained in 60 volumes. Parsons, however, was continually short of money. Between 1793 and 1803 she received 45 guineas from the Royal Literary Fund and also worked at the Royal Wardrobe. She died on 5 February 1811 at the age of 72 in Leytonstone in Essex, leaving behind four married daughters.
The Female Gothic Writer
Parsons turned to Gothic writing because it was popular at the time. Critics often claimed her works were not well-written and lacked organization. After losing her husband, Parsons had to support her family, so she turned to writing. She produced a lot of novels in a short amount of years, which is why critics claimed there would be inevitable errors in her stories. Parsons was a deeply religious Protestant. She believed in the good being rewarded and the wicked being punished, which shows through in her works.
In the year 1790, the same year as her husband’s death, Parsons published her first novel, The History of Miss Meredith. Parsons published The Castle of Wolfenbach in 1793. This was during the second half of the 18th century when England and France were starting to move away from the idea of arranged marriages. Society was leaning toward the idea of marrying freely for love. Parsons portrays this idea through The Castle of Wolfenbach along with the belief of a strong patriarchal family and respect toward the middle-class rather than aristocracy.
Some other novels of Parsons included Women as They Are (1797) and The Valley of St. Gothard (1799). Parsons shows female Gothic writing characteristics by having a heroine sort of trick her way into an inheritance while pretending to be vulnerable and innocent all the while. Parsons assisted in developing the “international” Gothic: the political outlook being part liberal and part conservative. Two of Parsons’s novels, The Castle of Wolfenbach and The Mysterious Warning (1796), were named as part of the “horrid romances” Catherine Morland recommends to Isabella Thorpe in chapter six of Jane Austin’s Northanger Abbey. The seven titles Austin referenced in her novel were thought to be fictitious until December 1912. Critics suggest Austin named these specific titles due to the fact Austin thought they were the worst of the genre. Critics proclaim it is no accident Radcliffe’s works were not named, and two of Parsons’s were. Many of Parsons’s novels had prefaces that would seem to invite sympathy from the readers towards her unfortunate situation and to excuse her lack of talent. The Castle of Wolfenbach and The Mysterious Warning had too clumsy and convenient happy endings for critics.
Bibliography
From Wikipedia
30janeajones
fascinating bit of literary history there.
31bleuroses
Gwendolen Mary "Gwen" Raverat née Darwin (26 August 1885 – 11 February 1957) was a celebrated English wood engraving artist who co-founded the Society of Wood Engravers in England.
Gwen Darwin was born in Cambridge, England, in 1885, the daughter of George Howard Darwin and his wife Maud du Puy. She was the granddaughter of the naturalist Charles Darwin and the first cousin of poet Frances Cornford. She married the French painter Jacques Raverat in 1911. They were active in the Bloomsbury Group and Rupert Brooke's Neo-Pagans until they moved to the south of France, where they lived in Vence, near Nice, until his death from multiple sclerosis in 1925. They had two daughters: Elisabeth (born 1916), who married the Norwegian politician Edvard Hambro, and Sophie Jane (born 1919), who married the Cambridge scholar M.G.M. Pryor and later Charles Gurney.
In 1927, Raverat's brother-in-law Geoffrey Keynes asked her to provide scenic designs for a proposed ballet drawn from William Blake's Illustrations of the Book of Job to commemorate the centennial of Blake's death; her second cousin Ralph Vaughan Williams wrote the music to the work which became known as Job, a masque for dancing. The miniature stage set that she built as a model still exists, housed at the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge.
Eventually she settled back in Cambridge where, in 1952, she published her classic childhood memoir Period Piece, which is still in print over 50 years later. In 2004 her grandson, William Pryor, edited and published the complete correspondence between Gwen, Jacques, and Virginia Woolf under the title "Virginia Woolf and the Raverats".
She illustrated a number of books with her distinctive line drawings and characteristic wood engravings, including Period Piece, and prints from her original wood blocks are much sought after today.
'Runaway"
"Swans"
Darwin College, Cambridge, occupies both her childhood home and the neighbouring Old Granary where she lived for the last years of her life. The college has named one of its student accommodation houses after her.
Bibliography
Books illustrated include:
Spring Morning – Frances Cornford (Poetry Bookshop, 1915)
The Cambridge Book of Poetry for Children (n.e.) – Kenneth Grahame (CUP 1932)
Over The Garden Wall – Eleanor Farjeon (Faber, 1933)
Les Amours de Daphne et Chloe – Longus (Ashendene, 1933)
Farmer’s Glory – A. G. Street (Faber, 1934)
Mountains and Molehills – Frances Cornford (CUP, 1934)
Cottage Angels – N. C. James (Dent, 1935)
A New Version of The First Four Tales from Hans Christian Andersen – R. P. Keigwin (CUP, 1935)
The Runaway – Elizabeth A. Hart (MacMillan, 1936)
Sentimental Journey – Laurence Sterne (Penguin Illustrated Classics, 1938)
Mustard, Pepper and Salt – Alison Uttley (Faber, 1938)
The Bird Talisman – H. A. Wedgwood (Faber, 1939)
Red-Letter Holiday – Virginia Pye (Faber, 1940)
Crossings – Walter De La Mare (Faber, 1942)
Countess Kate – Charlotte M. Yonge (Faber, 1948)
The Bedside Barsetshire – L. O. Tingay (Faber, 1949)
The London Bookbinders 1780-1806 – E. Howe (Dropmore, 1950)
Period Piece: A Cambridge Childhood (Autobiography) (1952)
Gwen Darwin was born in Cambridge, England, in 1885, the daughter of George Howard Darwin and his wife Maud du Puy. She was the granddaughter of the naturalist Charles Darwin and the first cousin of poet Frances Cornford. She married the French painter Jacques Raverat in 1911. They were active in the Bloomsbury Group and Rupert Brooke's Neo-Pagans until they moved to the south of France, where they lived in Vence, near Nice, until his death from multiple sclerosis in 1925. They had two daughters: Elisabeth (born 1916), who married the Norwegian politician Edvard Hambro, and Sophie Jane (born 1919), who married the Cambridge scholar M.G.M. Pryor and later Charles Gurney.
In 1927, Raverat's brother-in-law Geoffrey Keynes asked her to provide scenic designs for a proposed ballet drawn from William Blake's Illustrations of the Book of Job to commemorate the centennial of Blake's death; her second cousin Ralph Vaughan Williams wrote the music to the work which became known as Job, a masque for dancing. The miniature stage set that she built as a model still exists, housed at the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge.
Eventually she settled back in Cambridge where, in 1952, she published her classic childhood memoir Period Piece, which is still in print over 50 years later. In 2004 her grandson, William Pryor, edited and published the complete correspondence between Gwen, Jacques, and Virginia Woolf under the title "Virginia Woolf and the Raverats".
She illustrated a number of books with her distinctive line drawings and characteristic wood engravings, including Period Piece, and prints from her original wood blocks are much sought after today.
'Runaway"
"Swans"
Darwin College, Cambridge, occupies both her childhood home and the neighbouring Old Granary where she lived for the last years of her life. The college has named one of its student accommodation houses after her.
Bibliography
Books illustrated include:
Spring Morning – Frances Cornford (Poetry Bookshop, 1915)
The Cambridge Book of Poetry for Children (n.e.) – Kenneth Grahame (CUP 1932)
Over The Garden Wall – Eleanor Farjeon (Faber, 1933)
Les Amours de Daphne et Chloe – Longus (Ashendene, 1933)
Farmer’s Glory – A. G. Street (Faber, 1934)
Mountains and Molehills – Frances Cornford (CUP, 1934)
Cottage Angels – N. C. James (Dent, 1935)
A New Version of The First Four Tales from Hans Christian Andersen – R. P. Keigwin (CUP, 1935)
The Runaway – Elizabeth A. Hart (MacMillan, 1936)
Sentimental Journey – Laurence Sterne (Penguin Illustrated Classics, 1938)
Mustard, Pepper and Salt – Alison Uttley (Faber, 1938)
The Bird Talisman – H. A. Wedgwood (Faber, 1939)
Red-Letter Holiday – Virginia Pye (Faber, 1940)
Crossings – Walter De La Mare (Faber, 1942)
Countess Kate – Charlotte M. Yonge (Faber, 1948)
The Bedside Barsetshire – L. O. Tingay (Faber, 1949)
The London Bookbinders 1780-1806 – E. Howe (Dropmore, 1950)
Period Piece: A Cambridge Childhood (Autobiography) (1952)
32aluvalibri
Funny you talk about her, Cate, as I am currently reading Period Piece, which is very interesting.
34miss_read
Period Piece is one of my all-time favourite books and one of the few that I can re-read (I'm not a re-reader as a rule). Come to think of it, I'm about due for another Period Piece visit.
Just last week I read The Young Ardizzone by Edward Ardizzone which had much the same feel (along with beautiful illustrations) - so Paola, if you're on a roll I'd recommend it!
Also, if anyone wants to read more about the Darwin family, I'd recommend Emma Darwin: The Inspirational Wife of a Genius by Edna Healy. Rubbish title but fascinating book.
Thanks so much, Cate, for telling me about Virginia Woolf and the Raverats! I'd never heard of that one, but have now ordered myself a copy.
Just last week I read The Young Ardizzone by Edward Ardizzone which had much the same feel (along with beautiful illustrations) - so Paola, if you're on a roll I'd recommend it!
Also, if anyone wants to read more about the Darwin family, I'd recommend Emma Darwin: The Inspirational Wife of a Genius by Edna Healy. Rubbish title but fascinating book.
Thanks so much, Cate, for telling me about Virginia Woolf and the Raverats! I'd never heard of that one, but have now ordered myself a copy.
35bleuroses
Josephine Tey was a pseudonym used by Elizabeth Mackintosh (25 July 1896–13 February 1952) a Scottish author best known for her mystery novels. She also wrote as Gordon Daviot, under which name she wrote plays with an historical theme.
Mackintosh was born in Inverness, the daughter of Colin Mackintosh and Josephine (née Horne). She attended Inverness Royal Academy and then Anstey Physical Training College in Erdington, a suburb of Birmingham. She taught physical training at various schools in England and Scotland, but in 1926 she had to return to Inverness to care for her invalid father. There she began her career as a writer.
Mackintosh's best-known books were written under the name of Josephine Tey. Josephine was her mother's first name and Tey the surname of an English grandmother. In five of the mystery novels she wrote under the name of Tey, the hero is Scotland Yard Inspector Alan Grant. (Grant appears in a sixth, The Franchise Affair, as a minor character.)
The most famous of these is The Daughter of Time, in which Grant, laid up in hospital, has friends research reference books and contemporary documents so that he can puzzle out the mystery of whether King Richard III of England murdered his nephews, the Princes in the Tower. Grant comes to the firm conclusion that King Richard was totally innocent of the death of the Princes. (The novel has influenced later mystery writers, most notably Barbara Mertz, who writes under the name Elizabeth Peters. Mertz refers explicitly to Tey in "The Murders of Richard the Third," which sets a country house murder mystery among a group who believe that Richard III was innocent.) In 1990, The Daughter of Time was selected by the British-based Crime Writer's Association as the greatest mystery novel of all time; The Franchise Affair was eleventh on the same list of 100 books.
The Franchise Affair also has a historical context: although set in the 1940s, it is based on the 18th-century case of Elizabeth Canning. The Daughter of Time was the last of her books published during her lifetime. A further crime novel, The Singing Sands, was found in her papers and published posthumously.
About a dozen one-act plays and another dozen full-length plays were written under the name of Gordon Daviot. How she chose the name of Gordon is unknown, but Daviot was the name of a scenic locale near Inverness where she had spent many happy holidays with her family. Only four of her plays were produced during her lifetime. Richard of Bordeaux was particularly successful, running for fourteen months and making a household name of its young leading man and director, John Gielgud.
Proceeds from Tey's estate, including royalties from her books, were assigned to the National Trust. The heroine of Mary Stewart's The Ivy Tree (1961) uses Brat Farrar as a model when impersonating the missing heir to an estate. She describes the book as "the best of them all".
Tey is mentioned in the Stephen King novella, Apt Pupil (1982).
Tey appears as a main character in a series of novels by Nicola Upson called the "Josephine Tey Mysteries". An Expert in Murder (2008), the first in the series, is a detective story woven around the original production of Richard of Bordeaux.
Publications
Mystery novels
The Man in the Queue (or Killer in the Crowd) (1929) (as Gordon Daviot)
A Shilling for Candles (1936) (as Josephine Tey) (the basis of Hitchcock's 1937 movie Young and Innocent)
Miss Pym Disposes (1946) (as Josephine Tey)
The Franchise Affair (1948) (filmed in 1950 starring Michael Denison and Dulcie Gray)
Brat Farrar (or Come and Kill Me) (1949)
To Love and Be Wise (1950)
The Daughter of Time (1951)
The Singing Sands (1952)
Other novels
Kif: An Unvarnished History (1929) (as Gordon Daviot)
The Expensive Halo (1931)
The Privateer (1952)
Biography
Claverhouse (1937) (as Gordon Daviot) (a life of the 17th-century cavalry leader John Graham, 1st Viscount of Dundee)
Plays
Richard of Bordeaux (1932)
The Laughing Woman (1934)
Dramatisations
The Man In The Queue was broadcast in 1955, in an adaptation by H.B.Fortuin
A Shilling For Candles broadcast in 1954, 1963 and 1969 ad.Rex Rienits; in 1998 ad.John Fletcher
Miss Pym Disposes broadcast 1952 adapted by Jonquil Antony and 1987 adapted by Elizabeth Proud
The Franchise Affair broadcast 1952, 1970 and 2005
The Franchise Affair TV: '58 (Robert Hall), serials '62 (Constance Cox) and '88 (James Andrew Hall)
Brat Farrar Broadcast '54,'59 and '80 (All adapted Cyril Wentzel)
Brat Farrar Televised 1986 adapted by James Andrew Hall
The Daughter of Time Broadcast 1952 (scriptwriter not credited) and '82 (Neville Teller)
The Singing Sands Broadcast 1956 (Bertram Parnaby) Televised 1969 (James MacTaggart)
Source: Radio Times Archive
Nicola Upson's Josephine Tey Mysteries
An Expert in Murder (2008)
Angel with Two Faces (2009)
Two for Sorrow (2010)
Mackintosh was born in Inverness, the daughter of Colin Mackintosh and Josephine (née Horne). She attended Inverness Royal Academy and then Anstey Physical Training College in Erdington, a suburb of Birmingham. She taught physical training at various schools in England and Scotland, but in 1926 she had to return to Inverness to care for her invalid father. There she began her career as a writer.
Mackintosh's best-known books were written under the name of Josephine Tey. Josephine was her mother's first name and Tey the surname of an English grandmother. In five of the mystery novels she wrote under the name of Tey, the hero is Scotland Yard Inspector Alan Grant. (Grant appears in a sixth, The Franchise Affair, as a minor character.)
The most famous of these is The Daughter of Time, in which Grant, laid up in hospital, has friends research reference books and contemporary documents so that he can puzzle out the mystery of whether King Richard III of England murdered his nephews, the Princes in the Tower. Grant comes to the firm conclusion that King Richard was totally innocent of the death of the Princes. (The novel has influenced later mystery writers, most notably Barbara Mertz, who writes under the name Elizabeth Peters. Mertz refers explicitly to Tey in "The Murders of Richard the Third," which sets a country house murder mystery among a group who believe that Richard III was innocent.) In 1990, The Daughter of Time was selected by the British-based Crime Writer's Association as the greatest mystery novel of all time; The Franchise Affair was eleventh on the same list of 100 books.
The Franchise Affair also has a historical context: although set in the 1940s, it is based on the 18th-century case of Elizabeth Canning. The Daughter of Time was the last of her books published during her lifetime. A further crime novel, The Singing Sands, was found in her papers and published posthumously.
About a dozen one-act plays and another dozen full-length plays were written under the name of Gordon Daviot. How she chose the name of Gordon is unknown, but Daviot was the name of a scenic locale near Inverness where she had spent many happy holidays with her family. Only four of her plays were produced during her lifetime. Richard of Bordeaux was particularly successful, running for fourteen months and making a household name of its young leading man and director, John Gielgud.
Proceeds from Tey's estate, including royalties from her books, were assigned to the National Trust. The heroine of Mary Stewart's The Ivy Tree (1961) uses Brat Farrar as a model when impersonating the missing heir to an estate. She describes the book as "the best of them all".
Tey is mentioned in the Stephen King novella, Apt Pupil (1982).
Tey appears as a main character in a series of novels by Nicola Upson called the "Josephine Tey Mysteries". An Expert in Murder (2008), the first in the series, is a detective story woven around the original production of Richard of Bordeaux.
Publications
Mystery novels
The Man in the Queue (or Killer in the Crowd) (1929) (as Gordon Daviot)
A Shilling for Candles (1936) (as Josephine Tey) (the basis of Hitchcock's 1937 movie Young and Innocent)
Miss Pym Disposes (1946) (as Josephine Tey)
The Franchise Affair (1948) (filmed in 1950 starring Michael Denison and Dulcie Gray)
Brat Farrar (or Come and Kill Me) (1949)
To Love and Be Wise (1950)
The Daughter of Time (1951)
The Singing Sands (1952)
Other novels
Kif: An Unvarnished History (1929) (as Gordon Daviot)
The Expensive Halo (1931)
The Privateer (1952)
Biography
Claverhouse (1937) (as Gordon Daviot) (a life of the 17th-century cavalry leader John Graham, 1st Viscount of Dundee)
Plays
Richard of Bordeaux (1932)
The Laughing Woman (1934)
Dramatisations
The Man In The Queue was broadcast in 1955, in an adaptation by H.B.Fortuin
A Shilling For Candles broadcast in 1954, 1963 and 1969 ad.Rex Rienits; in 1998 ad.John Fletcher
Miss Pym Disposes broadcast 1952 adapted by Jonquil Antony and 1987 adapted by Elizabeth Proud
The Franchise Affair broadcast 1952, 1970 and 2005
The Franchise Affair TV: '58 (Robert Hall), serials '62 (Constance Cox) and '88 (James Andrew Hall)
Brat Farrar Broadcast '54,'59 and '80 (All adapted Cyril Wentzel)
Brat Farrar Televised 1986 adapted by James Andrew Hall
The Daughter of Time Broadcast 1952 (scriptwriter not credited) and '82 (Neville Teller)
The Singing Sands Broadcast 1956 (Bertram Parnaby) Televised 1969 (James MacTaggart)
Source: Radio Times Archive
Nicola Upson's Josephine Tey Mysteries
An Expert in Murder (2008)
Angel with Two Faces (2009)
Two for Sorrow (2010)
36miss_read
I heard Nicola Upton speak a year or so ago, and it was fascinating! She said that Tey led two lives - quiet spinster and devoted daughter in Inverness, and then on her trips to London she became a sparkling party animal and the centre of the theatrical social scene!
37kdcdavis
I discovered Josephine Tey last year, after finally following up on a list of novels being read by the heroine in Pamela Dean's Tam Lin. After reading The Daughter of Time, I couldn't stop until I'd found and read them all!
38drmarymccormack
Cate I LOVE this thread. I have no idea who half these authors are and I wish I could read it all. It's my favorite thing when you write a new one. Great stuff!
39bleuroses
Time and Tide was a British weekly political and literary review magazine founded by Lady Humphrey Mackworth (Margaret Haig Thomas; Lady Rhondda) in 1920.
It started out as a supporter of left wing and feminist causes and the mouthpiece of the feminist Six Point Group. It later moved to the right along with the views of its owner. It always supported and published literary talent. The initial editor was Helen Archdale. Lady Rhondda took over herself as editor in 1926 and remained for the rest of her life.
Margaret, Lady Mackworth, Saloon Passenger on the Lusitania. Saved.
Contributors included, Nancy Astor, Margaret Bondfield, Vera Brittain, Margery Corbett-Ashby, E.M. Delafield, Charlotte Despard, Crystal Eastman, Emma Goldman, Robert Graves, Charlotte Haldane, Mary Hamilton, Winifred Holtby, Storm Jameson, D. H. Lawrence, C.S. Lewis, F. L. Lucas, Rose Macaulay, Naomi Mitchison, Anthony Cronin (literary editor mid 1950s), George Orwell, Emmeline Pankhurst, Eleanor Rathbone, Elizabeth Robins, Olive Schreiner, George Bernard Shaw, Ethel Smyth, Helena Swanwick, Ernst Toller, Rebecca West, Ellen Wilkinson, Margaret Wintringham and Virginia Woolf.
In 1940, the article "The Necessity of Chivalry" by C.S. Lewis was published in Time and Tide, beginning an association between Lewis and the magazine that would last twenty years and include more articles and reviews. In 1944, Lewis's articles, "Democratic Education" and "The Parthenon and the Optative" were published, while "Hedonics" appeared in 1945. In 1946, the magazine published Lewis's articles "Different Tastes in Literature" and "Period Criticism". In 1954, Lewis published one of the first reviews of J.R.R. Tolkien's The Fellowship of the Ring, and in 1955 his reviews of The Two Towers and The Return of the King were published. Lewis also frequently contributed poetry to Time and Tide, including his poem "The Meteorite" (7 December 1946) which he used as the motto for his book Miracles (1947).
Time and Tide never sold well; its peak circulation was 14,000 copies. It is estimated that the magazine was subsidised by Lady Rhondda to the sum of £500,000 during the thirty-eight years she owned it.
With Lady Rhondda's death in 1958 it passed to the control of Rev Timothy Beaumont and editor John Thompson in March 1960. Under their supervision it became a political news-magazine with a Christian flavour during the 1960s. It however continued to lose £600 a week and, in June 1962, he sold it to Brittain Publishing Company where it was continued by W. J. Brittain. It became a monthly in 1970 and closed in 1979.
The "Time and Tide" title was later purchased by Sidgwick and Jackson, a subsidiary of the hotel group Trust House Forte. They continued to publish it quarterly during 1984 - 1986 from their global headquarters in London with Alexander Chancellor as editor. Again it was propped-up by a very wealthy peer, Lord Forte of Ripley.
It started out as a supporter of left wing and feminist causes and the mouthpiece of the feminist Six Point Group. It later moved to the right along with the views of its owner. It always supported and published literary talent. The initial editor was Helen Archdale. Lady Rhondda took over herself as editor in 1926 and remained for the rest of her life.
Margaret, Lady Mackworth, Saloon Passenger on the Lusitania. Saved.
Contributors included, Nancy Astor, Margaret Bondfield, Vera Brittain, Margery Corbett-Ashby, E.M. Delafield, Charlotte Despard, Crystal Eastman, Emma Goldman, Robert Graves, Charlotte Haldane, Mary Hamilton, Winifred Holtby, Storm Jameson, D. H. Lawrence, C.S. Lewis, F. L. Lucas, Rose Macaulay, Naomi Mitchison, Anthony Cronin (literary editor mid 1950s), George Orwell, Emmeline Pankhurst, Eleanor Rathbone, Elizabeth Robins, Olive Schreiner, George Bernard Shaw, Ethel Smyth, Helena Swanwick, Ernst Toller, Rebecca West, Ellen Wilkinson, Margaret Wintringham and Virginia Woolf.
In 1940, the article "The Necessity of Chivalry" by C.S. Lewis was published in Time and Tide, beginning an association between Lewis and the magazine that would last twenty years and include more articles and reviews. In 1944, Lewis's articles, "Democratic Education" and "The Parthenon and the Optative" were published, while "Hedonics" appeared in 1945. In 1946, the magazine published Lewis's articles "Different Tastes in Literature" and "Period Criticism". In 1954, Lewis published one of the first reviews of J.R.R. Tolkien's The Fellowship of the Ring, and in 1955 his reviews of The Two Towers and The Return of the King were published. Lewis also frequently contributed poetry to Time and Tide, including his poem "The Meteorite" (7 December 1946) which he used as the motto for his book Miracles (1947).
Time and Tide never sold well; its peak circulation was 14,000 copies. It is estimated that the magazine was subsidised by Lady Rhondda to the sum of £500,000 during the thirty-eight years she owned it.
With Lady Rhondda's death in 1958 it passed to the control of Rev Timothy Beaumont and editor John Thompson in March 1960. Under their supervision it became a political news-magazine with a Christian flavour during the 1960s. It however continued to lose £600 a week and, in June 1962, he sold it to Brittain Publishing Company where it was continued by W. J. Brittain. It became a monthly in 1970 and closed in 1979.
The "Time and Tide" title was later purchased by Sidgwick and Jackson, a subsidiary of the hotel group Trust House Forte. They continued to publish it quarterly during 1984 - 1986 from their global headquarters in London with Alexander Chancellor as editor. Again it was propped-up by a very wealthy peer, Lord Forte of Ripley.
40bleuroses
Eliza Haywood (1693 – 25 February 1756) was one of the most successful writers of her time; indeed, the two most popular English novels in the early eighteenth-century were Robinson Crusoe and Haywood's first novel, Love in Excess.
Since the 1980s, Eliza Haywood’s literary works have been gaining in recognition and interest. Described as “prolific even by the standards of a prolific age”. Haywood wrote and published over seventy works during her lifetime including fiction, drama, translations, poetry, conduct literature and periodicals. Haywood is a significant figure of the 18th century as one of the important founders of the novel in English. Today she is studied primarily as a novelist.
Love in Excess is a well crafted novel in which the claims of love and ambition are pursued through multiple storylines until the heroine engineers a melodramatic conclusion. Haywood's frankness about female sexuality may explain the later neglect of Love in Excess. (In contrast, her accomplished domestic novel, The History of Miss Betsy Thoughtless, has remained available.) Love in Excess and its reception provide a lively and valuable record of the challenge that female desire posed to social decorum.
Broadview Press has reissued many of Haywood's novels.
Since the 1980s, Eliza Haywood’s literary works have been gaining in recognition and interest. Described as “prolific even by the standards of a prolific age”. Haywood wrote and published over seventy works during her lifetime including fiction, drama, translations, poetry, conduct literature and periodicals. Haywood is a significant figure of the 18th century as one of the important founders of the novel in English. Today she is studied primarily as a novelist.
Love in Excess is a well crafted novel in which the claims of love and ambition are pursued through multiple storylines until the heroine engineers a melodramatic conclusion. Haywood's frankness about female sexuality may explain the later neglect of Love in Excess. (In contrast, her accomplished domestic novel, The History of Miss Betsy Thoughtless, has remained available.) Love in Excess and its reception provide a lively and valuable record of the challenge that female desire posed to social decorum.
Broadview Press has reissued many of Haywood's novels.
41bleuroses
A day late in posting!
It's the birthday of writer Vita Sackville-West, born near Sevenoaks, England (9 March 1892). Her father was a baron, and she grew up at the family estate, Knole House, a Tudor mansion in Kent with a long history. The Archbishop of Canterbury had lived there until King Henry VIII took it away because he wanted it for himself. Knole House has 365 rooms, one for each day of the year.
She was educated at home by a governess, then went to an all-girls school. She started writing poetry at an early age, and by the time she was 18, she had written eight novels and several plays, some of them in French or Italian. She was beautiful, more than six feet tall, with dark, heavy-lidded eyes. She fell in love with several women, some of them her classmates. When she was 21, she married a diplomat, Harold Nicholson, even while she was in a passionate affair with another woman. She said of Nicholson: "Our relationship was so fresh, so intellectual, so unphysical, that I never thought of him in that aspect at all (...) Some men seem to be born to be lovers, others to be husbands; he belongs to the latter category." For his part, Nicholson had his own share of lovers. Despite their unconventional marriage, Sackville-West and Nicholson remained devoted to each other for the rest of their lives, writing each other daily when they were apart, and raising a son together.
In December of 1922, when Sackville-West was 30 years old, she met Virginia Woolf at a dinner party. Eventually they became friends, and then lovers. Sackville-West was the inspiration for the main character in Woolf's novel Orlando (1928). In 1927, busily working on her novel and jealous of Sackville-West's affair with a woman named Mary Campbell, Woolf wrote her a letter: "Suppose Orlando turns out to be about Vita; and its all about you and the lusts of your flesh and the lure of your mind (heart you have none, who go gallivanting down the lanes with Campbell) — suppose there's the kind of shimmer of reality which sometimes attaches to my people ... Shall you mind?"
Although she is best remembered as the inspiration for Orlando, Sackville-West was a successful writer in her own right. She wrote more than 15 novels and 10 books of poetry, including The Edwardians (1930) and All Passion Spent (1931). For the last 15 years of her life, she contributed a weekly gardening column called "In Your Garden" to the Observer. She wrote the columns just to make money, and even called them "beastly," but they are considered classics of garden writing, and still widely read today.
She wrote: "It is necessary to write, if the days are not to slip emptily by. How else, indeed, to clap the net over the butterfly of the moment?"
From The Writer's Almanac
It's the birthday of writer Vita Sackville-West, born near Sevenoaks, England (9 March 1892). Her father was a baron, and she grew up at the family estate, Knole House, a Tudor mansion in Kent with a long history. The Archbishop of Canterbury had lived there until King Henry VIII took it away because he wanted it for himself. Knole House has 365 rooms, one for each day of the year.
She was educated at home by a governess, then went to an all-girls school. She started writing poetry at an early age, and by the time she was 18, she had written eight novels and several plays, some of them in French or Italian. She was beautiful, more than six feet tall, with dark, heavy-lidded eyes. She fell in love with several women, some of them her classmates. When she was 21, she married a diplomat, Harold Nicholson, even while she was in a passionate affair with another woman. She said of Nicholson: "Our relationship was so fresh, so intellectual, so unphysical, that I never thought of him in that aspect at all (...) Some men seem to be born to be lovers, others to be husbands; he belongs to the latter category." For his part, Nicholson had his own share of lovers. Despite their unconventional marriage, Sackville-West and Nicholson remained devoted to each other for the rest of their lives, writing each other daily when they were apart, and raising a son together.
In December of 1922, when Sackville-West was 30 years old, she met Virginia Woolf at a dinner party. Eventually they became friends, and then lovers. Sackville-West was the inspiration for the main character in Woolf's novel Orlando (1928). In 1927, busily working on her novel and jealous of Sackville-West's affair with a woman named Mary Campbell, Woolf wrote her a letter: "Suppose Orlando turns out to be about Vita; and its all about you and the lusts of your flesh and the lure of your mind (heart you have none, who go gallivanting down the lanes with Campbell) — suppose there's the kind of shimmer of reality which sometimes attaches to my people ... Shall you mind?"
Although she is best remembered as the inspiration for Orlando, Sackville-West was a successful writer in her own right. She wrote more than 15 novels and 10 books of poetry, including The Edwardians (1930) and All Passion Spent (1931). For the last 15 years of her life, she contributed a weekly gardening column called "In Your Garden" to the Observer. She wrote the columns just to make money, and even called them "beastly," but they are considered classics of garden writing, and still widely read today.
She wrote: "It is necessary to write, if the days are not to slip emptily by. How else, indeed, to clap the net over the butterfly of the moment?"
From The Writer's Almanac
42kaggsy
I've just stumbled across your wonderful group whilst looking up Emily Holmes Coleman and have joined Library Thing just to be able to say thank you for all you've done here. I've loved and read Virago classics since they first appeared and still love and read them now - but the posts here have pointed me to some I haven't got round to yet, so thank you!
43kaggsy
And also, on the subject of Josephine Tey (who is wonderfully amazing), if anyone wants to investigate further, The Book People have all 8 novels on special offer for £8.99 at the moment (hope I am allowed to post stuff like that here)
44Liz1564
Dear Kaggsy,
Welcome! I hope you continue to enjoy this wonderful group. I joined for the same reason after lurking for months. Now I feel as though this is my internet neighborhood.
Elaine
Welcome! I hope you continue to enjoy this wonderful group. I joined for the same reason after lurking for months. Now I feel as though this is my internet neighborhood.
Elaine
45romain
Me too Kaggsy. I don't want to litter this wonderful thread with multiple welcomes so will take it over to another more suitable one.
46lauralkeet
Welcome kaggsy! I'm glad you've found us and look forward to seeing you more around here.
Laura
Laura
