Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
Rosamond Lehmann
-
Standard Name: Lehmann, Rosamond
Birth Name: Rosamond Nina Lehmann
RL
has received less critical attention than other women modernists, especially her closest literary colleagues Elizabeth Bowen
and Virginia Woolf
. However, after the reprinting of her work in the 1980s, her seven novels, her short stories, and one play became much better known. After the unexpected death of her daughter, RL
ceased writing for about seven years. When she resumed she produced only one more novel, in addition to a memoir and spiritualist writings.
Like ET
's first book, this was praised by distinguished but not unanimous voices: Elizabeth Bowen
found an exciting distinction about every page, and Rosamond Lehmann
noted the stripped, piercing feminine wit and called ET
Literary responses
Elizabeth Taylor
One of the first to review this novel was Rosamond Lehmann
; some of her commendatory phrases are still in use in promotional material from Virago
.
Beauman, Nicola. The Other Elizabeth Taylor. Persephone Books.
The New York Times Book Review found this book charmingly realistic;
Mezei, Kathy, and Chiara Briganti. “’She must be a very good novelist’: Rereading E. H. Young (1880-1949)”. English Studies in Canada, Vol.
27
, No. 3, pp. 303-31.
315
V. S. Pritchett
thought it typical of fiction by women in its fine discrimination of character. It made some reviewers think of...
Literary responses
Ivy Compton-Burnett
Margaret Jourdain
(herself the author of many books in print) told the antiquarian Joan Evans
, Ivy has written a book and I expect it's very bad. We have decided I shan't read it and...
Literary responses
Betty Miller
Rosamond Lehmann
praised this novel in a letter as intelligent, brave enough to tackle a serious moral problem, written with wonderful vividness and sensitivity, and excellent in its character-drawing of men as well as women...
politics
Marghanita Laski
On 30 October 1958 ML
was one of the signatories to a letter to the editor of theTimes urging the government to cease testing nuclear weapons; others who signed included Peggy Ashcroft
, Storm Jameson
Publishing
Margiad Evans
She had been working on this collection as a whole since 1943, while one item, The Wicked Woman, dates from October 1933 (while she was writing Turf or Stone) and was printed in...
Publishing
Olivia Manning
It was re-issued in 1984 in an omnibus volume from Virago
together with two other novels about growing up female: Rosamond Lehmann
's The Weather in the Streets and Antonia White
's Frost in May.
Reception
Elizabeth Jenkins
Rosamond Lehmann
recommended EJ
's writing to Carmen Callil
for inclusion in the Virago Modern Classics series.
Callil, Carmen. “The stories of our lives”. Guardian Unlimited.
Reception
Edith Mary Moore
In 1938, EMM
's name appeared in an early number of Kriticky Mesicnik, a Czech literary periodical edited by Václav Černý
(reprinted in 1972 and 1992), in a list of British writers including Rosamond Lehmann
Textual Features
Elizabeth Bowen
The novel has two heroines: Portia, a fifteen-year-old, and Anna Quayne, wife of Thomas Quayne. Portia, Thomas' half-sister, comes to live with the Quaynes in their Regent's Park house (based on EB
's own London...
Textual Features
Marjorie Bowen
MB
credits British women novelists for modifying the methods of the great European novelists, noting in particular Dorothy Richardson
's perfection of the stream-of-consciousness technique. She draws a contrast between Dorothy Richardson
's Miriam and...
Textual Features
Mollie Panter-Downes
This novel has many modernist features. Nicola Beauman mentions the influence of Rosamond Lehmann
, and also palpable is that of Virginia Woolf
. The first, two-page chapter describes the Sussex village of Wealding and...
Textual Production
Henry Green
Rosamond Lehmann
and Goronwy Rees
had been instrumental in introducing Green as a Hogarth Press author.
