Storm Jameson (1891–1986)
Author of Company Parade
About the Author
Image credit: Courtesy of the NYPL Digital Gallery (image use requires permission from the New York Public Library)
Series
Works by Storm Jameson
One Ulysses too many 6 copies
The Pitiful Wife 3 copies
Delicate monster 2 copies
The moon is making 2 copies
Farewell to youth 2 copies
The fort 2 copies
The happy highways 2 copies
The Pot Boils 2 copies
Road from the Monument 1 copy
Návrat : triumf času II 1 copy
Pyšná loď : triumf času I 1 copy
The end of this war 1 copy
The single heart 1 copy
The clash 1 copy
The Last Night 1 copy
Storm Jameson Margaret 1 copy
Associated Works
Fourteen stories from one plot, based on "Mr. Fothergill's plot" (1932) — Contributor — 6 copies, 1 review
Then and Now. A Selection of Articles, Stories & Poems, Taken from the First Fifty Numbers of ‘Now & Then’, 1921–35. Together with Some Illustrations, etc. (1935) — Contributor — 2 copies
The New Decameron, the Third day — Contributor — 1 copy
Leeds University verse, 1914-24 — Contributor — 1 copy
Tagged
Common Knowledge
- Canonical name
- Jameson, Storm
- Legal name
- Chapman, Margaret Storm Jameson
- Other names
- James, Margaret Ethel (birth)
Clarke, Margaret Ethel
Chapman, Margaret Ethel
Chapman, Margaret Ethel Storm - Birthdate
- 1891-01-08
- Date of death
- 1986-09-30
- Gender
- female
- Education
- University of Leeds (BA) (English)
King's College, London (MA) - Occupations
- critic
novelist
publishing
teacher
journalist
autobiographer - Organizations
- American Academy of Arts and Letters ( [1978])
President, British Section, International PEN
National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies
Women's International League for Peace and Freedom
International Union of Revolutionary Writers
Peace Pledge Union - Awards and honors
- Honorary DLitt., Leeds University (1943)
- Relationships
- Chapman, Guy (husband)
Brittain, Vera (friend)
Linke, Lilo (friend) - Short biography
- Storm Jameson was the pen name of Margaret Storm Jameson Chapman, born in Whitby, Yorkshire. She graduated from the University of Leeds and earned a master's degree from King's College London in 1914. She worked as a teacher for a short time before launching her career as a writer. She had become a socialist and a strong advocate of women suffrage while at Leeds. She became a prolific writer who produced 47 novels, beginning with The Pot Boils (1919) plus plays, nonfiction books, poems, essays, biographies, memoirs, and her two volumes of autobiography, No Time Like the Present (1933) and Journey from the North (1969). After the end of an early and brief first marriage, she married Guy Chapman, also a writer, in 1926. In the early 1930s, she began a close friendship with Vera Brittain, who had also lost a brother in World War I and shared her pacifist views. Jameson was active in British politics for many year and was a member of the National Union of Women Suffrage Societies, the Peace Pledge Union, and the International Union of Revolutionary Writers. She was a longtime president of International PEN.
- Nationality
- UK
- Birthplace
- Whitby, Yorkshire, England, UK
- Places of residence
- Whitby, Yorkshire, England, UK
London, England, UK
Cambridge, Cambridgeshire, England, UK - Place of death
- Little Paxton, St Neots, England, UK
- Map Location
- England, UK
Members
Reviews
(Warning: This review contains spoilers for both The Lovely Ship and The Voyage Home.)
This concluding volume in Storm Jameson's "Triumph Of Time" trilogy leaps forward from the late Victorian era of The Voyage Home to the rapid change and confusion of the late Edwardian period and the horrors of World War I. Mary Hervey herself, however, though by now in her seventies, is much as we left her at the end of The Voyage Home: domineering, obstinate, and self-willed. Yet the intervening years show more have taken their toll on Mary. Her most beloved son, Richard Roxby, who slipped from her grasp to undertake "a five-year journey", died before its conclusion, leaving behind a Spanish-American widow and a daughter, Maria. Meanwhile, though Mary will not let herself see it, Hugh Hervey's heath is failing; while the estrangement between Mary and her favourite daughter, Sylvia, begun with Sylvia's rash marriage and set in stone when, in response to her mother swallowing her pride and making the first move of reconciliation, Sylvia slammed the door in her face, continues into the next generation, with Mary's rejection of Sylvia's children. All Mary's hopes for the future, and in particular her hopes for her shipyards and steelworks, now centre in her grandson, Nicholas Roxby, the only son of her scorned second daughter, Clara, who Mary thrusts aside without compunction as she tries to mold Nicholas to her own purposes.
The narrative of A Richer Dust is a a divided one, split between Mary, whose sheer force of will allows her to ignore old age and hold at bay a world she barely understands, and Nicholas, whose own confusion of purpose reflects the growing chaos across Europe. An early, abortive love affair with Maria Roxby, who contracts a wealthy marriage even while making declarations of eternal love to Nicholas, prepares the reader for his subsequent, disastrous marriage to Jenny Ling, one marked by the near-masochism with which he tolerates his wife's evasions and deceit. The war, when it comes, is an escape and a refuge for Nicholas, who finds new clarity and strength in its demands, and who, like his uncle before him, sets quietly but unswervingly about the task of freeing himself from the spectre of Garton's and the weight of Mary Hervey's expectations.
As a whole, the "Triumph Of Time" trilogy offers a vivid account of a rapidly changing world, and of a woman who both defies it and exemplifies it. Its strength lies equally in Storm Jameson's grasp of the middle- and working-class Yorkshire setting of her story, and the very distance this milieu puts between this particular series and the bulk of historical novels set in the same time period. The point is made that Mary Hervey is entirely a product of a particular time and place, and that it is as much a coincidence of circumstances as her own indomitable will that allows her to sieze her opportunity and build an empire. Yet as we know, empires have a habit of falling. While we must admire Mary Hervey's dedication and courage, and her ability to withstand the many blows that life aims at her, her wilful stubborness and her conviction that she has the right to control the lives of others make her difficult to like; and it becomes hard not to feel that, in the repeated thwarting of her ambitions, she is only getting what she deserves. But even the final, shattering blow of Nicholas's defection is not enough to defeat Mary Hervey, of whom it might be justly said that nothing in her running of Garton's Shipbuilding and Marine Engineering Works Limited becomes her so well as the leaving of it... show less
This concluding volume in Storm Jameson's "Triumph Of Time" trilogy leaps forward from the late Victorian era of The Voyage Home to the rapid change and confusion of the late Edwardian period and the horrors of World War I. Mary Hervey herself, however, though by now in her seventies, is much as we left her at the end of The Voyage Home: domineering, obstinate, and self-willed. Yet the intervening years show more have taken their toll on Mary. Her most beloved son, Richard Roxby, who slipped from her grasp to undertake "a five-year journey", died before its conclusion, leaving behind a Spanish-American widow and a daughter, Maria. Meanwhile, though Mary will not let herself see it, Hugh Hervey's heath is failing; while the estrangement between Mary and her favourite daughter, Sylvia, begun with Sylvia's rash marriage and set in stone when, in response to her mother swallowing her pride and making the first move of reconciliation, Sylvia slammed the door in her face, continues into the next generation, with Mary's rejection of Sylvia's children. All Mary's hopes for the future, and in particular her hopes for her shipyards and steelworks, now centre in her grandson, Nicholas Roxby, the only son of her scorned second daughter, Clara, who Mary thrusts aside without compunction as she tries to mold Nicholas to her own purposes.
The narrative of A Richer Dust is a a divided one, split between Mary, whose sheer force of will allows her to ignore old age and hold at bay a world she barely understands, and Nicholas, whose own confusion of purpose reflects the growing chaos across Europe. An early, abortive love affair with Maria Roxby, who contracts a wealthy marriage even while making declarations of eternal love to Nicholas, prepares the reader for his subsequent, disastrous marriage to Jenny Ling, one marked by the near-masochism with which he tolerates his wife's evasions and deceit. The war, when it comes, is an escape and a refuge for Nicholas, who finds new clarity and strength in its demands, and who, like his uncle before him, sets quietly but unswervingly about the task of freeing himself from the spectre of Garton's and the weight of Mary Hervey's expectations.
As a whole, the "Triumph Of Time" trilogy offers a vivid account of a rapidly changing world, and of a woman who both defies it and exemplifies it. Its strength lies equally in Storm Jameson's grasp of the middle- and working-class Yorkshire setting of her story, and the very distance this milieu puts between this particular series and the bulk of historical novels set in the same time period. The point is made that Mary Hervey is entirely a product of a particular time and place, and that it is as much a coincidence of circumstances as her own indomitable will that allows her to sieze her opportunity and build an empire. Yet as we know, empires have a habit of falling. While we must admire Mary Hervey's dedication and courage, and her ability to withstand the many blows that life aims at her, her wilful stubborness and her conviction that she has the right to control the lives of others make her difficult to like; and it becomes hard not to feel that, in the repeated thwarting of her ambitions, she is only getting what she deserves. But even the final, shattering blow of Nicholas's defection is not enough to defeat Mary Hervey, of whom it might be justly said that nothing in her running of Garton's Shipbuilding and Marine Engineering Works Limited becomes her so well as the leaving of it... show less
An odd book, and perhaps even more odd because Jameson is such a good writer. Greg Mott is a highly-regarded author, and the director of an artistic institute. He came from humble beginnings – his father was a destitute ex-seaman, and – the shame! – he graduated from Sheffield University – but he has made something of himself, a great man of letters, with important friends and acquaintances. I have to wonder if Mott were based on Evelyn Waugh, although Waugh went to Oxford. The Road show more from the Monument opens with the retirement of a public school teacher – he’s been there sixty years, wasn’t even qualified when he started, and has been paid a pittance throughout his tenure. The teacher spotted Mott’s potential early, and spoent his own money to put Mott through university. After leaving the school, he goes down to London to see what Mott has made of himself – and realises that Mott’s intelligence and wisdom pretty much skin-deep. He goes back gom edisappointed. The story then focuses on Mott’s second-in-command, Lambert Corry, his best friend at school, who went to Oxford, became a civil servant, rose through the ranks but then resigned to take up a position at the institute. Unlike Mott, he is not a successful author. Although the plot of The Road from the Monument is ostensibly about the scandal which hovers over Mott after he picks up a young woman while on holiday in Nice and gets her pregnant, it reads more like a poison pen letter from Jameson to the UK’s literary set. Most of the characters are writers of varying degrees of success, and James sticks the knife into every one. I tweeted a quote from the book while reading it, and it’s one of the mildest characterisations in the book of one of its cast: “they always gave him credit for honesty and integrity, the virtues of a moth-eaten writer. He got what he deserved – respect and neglect”. The upper class are also depicted as sociopaths (which I suspect they are, anyway; as are the plutocrats), and, in fact, no one in this novel is at all sympathetic… except perhaps the young woman who is made pregnant by Mott. Not a pleasant book to read (I’m not doing too well in that respect in this post), and Jameson does over-do the interiority… but she’s nonetheless a sharp writer, and I plan to further explore her oeuvre. show less
The title is deceptive. The three long novellas that comprise Women Against Men-- "Delicate Monster," The Single Heart," and "A Day Off" might be better titled "Women against Women." The stories take place before, during, & after WWI (but before WWII); they were originally published in 1932 & 1933.
The first story, "Delicate Monster," features a narrator who is a novelist & literary agent who has had a love-hate friendship with another woman who is also a novelist since childhood. Her friend show more writes popular, successful, "gushing" novels exploiting her own sexual adventures, novels that the narrator despises; but then the narrator pretty much despises all novelists. (Except herself? It's not really clear.) She suffers agonies of jealousy (that she does not spare the reader) when she discovers that her friend has had casual sex with her husband. The story, in short, is all about what a "delicate monster" the friend is. The high point of "Delicate Monster" is the narrator's relationship with her friend's daughter, but I kept having the sneaking suspicion that the narrator's interest in her friend's daughter was due more to her delight in understanding the young girl/woman, knowing that her friend did not, than to genuine affection. (I suppose it's the narrator's sometimes smug & always grudging attitude toward the world that makes me question her motives.)
The second novella, "The Single Heart," relates the tale of a woman's love for a man and all that she sacrifices to allow him to be who he wants to be. One of those sacrifices ends up being herself, of course: her heart literally wears out & stops before she's even 40. Stories of singe-minded self-sacrifice for love tend to leave me cold. Love, in this case, functions as a kind of monomania that lasts all this woman's adult life & drains her dry, while the object of her love remains largely oblivious to the price she is paying. (But then he has to remain oblivious, to be the man he wants to be...)
The third story, "A Day Off," is of another kind of monster, an aging woman who began as a mill girl working an industrial loom, then ran away to London where she worked first as a hotel maid & then in a hole-in-the-wall restaurant, but who has mainly lived off her sexual relationships with men for most of her life & is facing middle age alone & broke except for what she can steal from women weaker than she is.
Sometimes the writing is interesting, flashing with an occasional insight or turn of phrase, & without doubt it offers many well-observed details along the way that make even passing characters come alive. But the effect is uneven, & the narration fairly steadily conveys a bleak sense of a world populated by individuals wrapped in lonely isolation. All the women in these stories accept the patriarchal system as an unquestioned given & play it cynically. I came away thinking that Storm Jameson didn't much like women-- & maybe not men, either. Early in "Delicate Monster" the narrator remarks "The truth is I dislike extremely your *healthy* school of novel-writing. I like a novel to be sharp and bitter, or else so artificial that the manner is everything and the matter nothing." Sharp & bitter is exactly what these novellas are. show less
The first story, "Delicate Monster," features a narrator who is a novelist & literary agent who has had a love-hate friendship with another woman who is also a novelist since childhood. Her friend show more writes popular, successful, "gushing" novels exploiting her own sexual adventures, novels that the narrator despises; but then the narrator pretty much despises all novelists. (Except herself? It's not really clear.) She suffers agonies of jealousy (that she does not spare the reader) when she discovers that her friend has had casual sex with her husband. The story, in short, is all about what a "delicate monster" the friend is. The high point of "Delicate Monster" is the narrator's relationship with her friend's daughter, but I kept having the sneaking suspicion that the narrator's interest in her friend's daughter was due more to her delight in understanding the young girl/woman, knowing that her friend did not, than to genuine affection. (I suppose it's the narrator's sometimes smug & always grudging attitude toward the world that makes me question her motives.)
The second novella, "The Single Heart," relates the tale of a woman's love for a man and all that she sacrifices to allow him to be who he wants to be. One of those sacrifices ends up being herself, of course: her heart literally wears out & stops before she's even 40. Stories of singe-minded self-sacrifice for love tend to leave me cold. Love, in this case, functions as a kind of monomania that lasts all this woman's adult life & drains her dry, while the object of her love remains largely oblivious to the price she is paying. (But then he has to remain oblivious, to be the man he wants to be...)
The third story, "A Day Off," is of another kind of monster, an aging woman who began as a mill girl working an industrial loom, then ran away to London where she worked first as a hotel maid & then in a hole-in-the-wall restaurant, but who has mainly lived off her sexual relationships with men for most of her life & is facing middle age alone & broke except for what she can steal from women weaker than she is.
Sometimes the writing is interesting, flashing with an occasional insight or turn of phrase, & without doubt it offers many well-observed details along the way that make even passing characters come alive. But the effect is uneven, & the narration fairly steadily conveys a bleak sense of a world populated by individuals wrapped in lonely isolation. All the women in these stories accept the patriarchal system as an unquestioned given & play it cynically. I came away thinking that Storm Jameson didn't much like women-- & maybe not men, either. Early in "Delicate Monster" the narrator remarks "The truth is I dislike extremely your *healthy* school of novel-writing. I like a novel to be sharp and bitter, or else so artificial that the manner is everything and the matter nothing." Sharp & bitter is exactly what these novellas are. show less
Company Parade is the story of Hervey Russell, who leaves her little son at the end of the First World War, in order to make a better home for him and to give him the opportunities he deserves. She gets a job as an advertising copy writer on the basis of a first novel and manages to endure separation by working and by spending time with two old friends (Class of 1913), Philip and T.S. Hervey is a person of contradictions: brilliant, defiantly shy, ambitious, passionate, self-assertive, show more almost pathetically diffident and placating. She shares her friends' radicalism; she anticipates and fears her husband's demobilization; she misses her son; she yearns and determines to make her mark in the world. The novel expands around Hervey into the lives of other equally interesting characters.
Jameson's prose is lovely - quiet and individual with arresting turns of phrase which do not interrupt the narrative flow. I'm struck by a short paragraph in which Hervey is walking to interview for a job. "When the day came she put on a newly bought hat. This was a mistake." The paragraph progresses as Hervey walks slowly and rehearses her answers to questions until we read, "Here she caught sight of herself in a shop window in Mount Street and straightened her hat. It is easy to imagine that you are a success; it is not so easy to imagine that your hat is on straight when it is in fact over one ear." This perfectly captures the vulnerability of a talented, insecure young woman, and I find it wonderful.
Company Parade was intended to be the first of five or six novels in which Storm Jameson would "depict the contemporary scene," that of England following WWI. In the end she wrote only three books, saying "The deep reason why I abandoned Mirror in Darkness {her title for the series}... was a stifled instinct that I was working against the grain of my talent." Whatever she meant, I felt none of the characters really came to life. They were complex, believable, interesting, but lacking some spark of vitality without which a book never becomes an alternate reality. I will certainly read the other two books in the series and am very happy to have discovered Storm Jameson. show less
Jameson's prose is lovely - quiet and individual with arresting turns of phrase which do not interrupt the narrative flow. I'm struck by a short paragraph in which Hervey is walking to interview for a job. "When the day came she put on a newly bought hat. This was a mistake." The paragraph progresses as Hervey walks slowly and rehearses her answers to questions until we read, "Here she caught sight of herself in a shop window in Mount Street and straightened her hat. It is easy to imagine that you are a success; it is not so easy to imagine that your hat is on straight when it is in fact over one ear." This perfectly captures the vulnerability of a talented, insecure young woman, and I find it wonderful.
Company Parade was intended to be the first of five or six novels in which Storm Jameson would "depict the contemporary scene," that of England following WWI. In the end she wrote only three books, saying "The deep reason why I abandoned Mirror in Darkness {her title for the series}... was a stifled instinct that I was working against the grain of my talent." Whatever she meant, I felt none of the characters really came to life. They were complex, believable, interesting, but lacking some spark of vitality without which a book never becomes an alternate reality. I will certainly read the other two books in the series and am very happy to have discovered Storm Jameson. show less
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Statistics
- Works
- 65
- Also by
- 8
- Members
- 1,038
- Popularity
- #24,806
- Rating
- 4.1
- Reviews
- 19
- ISBNs
- 88
- Languages
- 1
- Favorited
- 5