Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
Graham Greene
-
Standard Name: Greene, Graham
Birth Name: Henry Graham Greene
An English novelist of exceptional energy, Graham Greene
built a career spanning a dozen genres—most notably more than twenty novels or thrillers, as well as short stories, film reviews, travel books, plays, screenplays, and autobiography. Many of his novels wrestle with issues of belief. His personal correspondence included thousands of letters, and for much of his life he reported as a spy to the British Secret Intelligence Service
. His restlessness drew him to dangerous places, adulterous relationships, self-harm, and a belief, infusing his pages, that a focus on squalor makes for an honest portrayal of the world.
The author of twelve novels (ranging from political thrillers through social satire, comedy of manners, and near-gothic), still at the height of her career, HM
has been likened to Muriel Spark
or Edna O'Brien
for...
Elizabeth Northcote, Countess of Iddesleigh, et al. “List of Books by Mrs Belloc Lowndes, Foreword”. Diaries and Letters of Marie Belloc Lowndes, 1911-1947, edited by Susan Lowndes Marques and Susan Lowndes Marques, Chatto and Windus, pp. prelims, 1 - 3.
2
Performance of text
Bryony Lavery
BL
's dramatic adaptation of Graham Greene
's novel Brighton Rock was her latest work to open at the Theatre Royal, York (coinciding with a revival of her Frozen). It then went on tour.
Billington, Michael. “A Criminal Coldness”. Country Life, pp. 94-5.
94
Intertextuality and Influence
P. D. James
PDJ
followed the English tradition of detective-story writing that has continued from the 1920s and 1930s, a genre in which many women have held dominant positions. She spoke of her adolescent reading as influenced in...
Fictionalization
Violet Hunt
Versions of VH
also emerge in the fictions of her lover, Ford Madox Ford
. Barbara Belford
suggests that she sparked elements of both Leonora Ashburnham and Florence Dowell in his The Good Soldier (1915)...
Literary responses
Elizabeth Jane Howard
Arthur Koestler
described this, before publication, as a cross between Nancy Mitford
and Evelyn Waugh
. When EJH
told him she was having trouble finishing it, he said she had finished it, and written beyond...
Literary responses
Patricia Highsmith
Graham Greene
's foreword observes that this story is hard to beat for pure physical horror, an effect rare in PH
's work.
Wilson, Andrew Norman. Beautiful Shadow: A Life of Patricia Highsmith. Bloomsbury.
267
Literary responses
Patricia Highsmith
She has been better appreciated in Britain than her native USA, and perhaps better in Europe than in Britain. Frank Richards
wrote that she made a life's work of her ostracisation from the American...
Textual Production
Patricia Highsmith
PH
published a short-story collection, The Snail-Watcher, and Other Stories, in New York, which was published in Britain as Eleven: Short Stories, with a foreword by Graham Greene
.
Wilson, Andrew Norman. Beautiful Shadow: A Life of Patricia Highsmith. Bloomsbury.
111
Contemporary Authors: New Revision Series. Gale Research.
62
Textual Production
Patricia Highsmith
Though the ideal cannot normally be achieved, she says, writing a book is really a long continuous process, which, ideally, should be interrupted only by sleep.
Highsmith, Patricia. Plotting and Writing Suspense Fiction. St Martin’s Press.
73
When she had finished work for the day...
Literary responses
Patricia Highsmith
Reviews were mixed. Both the New Statesman and the Times Literary Supplement were highly critical, the latter going so far as to call the book a depressingly . . . mechanical exercise in self-pastiche, employing...
Intertextuality and Influence
Rumer Godden
RG
found this negotiation among publishers traumatic. She had updated Shakespeare
's The Tempest in the spirit of the entertainments which Graham Greene
used to intersperse among his serious novels. Spencer Curtis
thought the story...
Literary responses
Daphne Du Maurier
Many commentators, like Anne Armstrong
of the Saturday Review and a reviewer in Punch, were shocked and disgusted
Kelly, Richard. Daphne du Maurier. Twayne.
46
by DDM
's cold portrayal of Julius.Graham Greene
wrote a review of this novel...
Literary responses
Shelagh Delaney
The play provoked controversy for its matter-of-fact treatment of illegitimate pregnancy, miscegenation, and (male) homosexuality. Some critics admired its freshness and grit, while others found it disgusting and self-indulgent. All agreed that it would have...
Education
Frances Cornford
Although her step-brother Bernard went to Eton
, Frances Cornford received her education at home, and sometimes shared classes with her nearby cousins, one of whom was Gwen Darwin
, later Raverat.
Cornford, Hugh et al. “Frances Cornford 1886-1960”. Selected Poems, edited by Jane Dowson and Jane Dowson, Enitharmon Press, p. xxvii - xxxvii.
xxviii
Raverat, Gwen. Period Piece: A Cambridge Childhood. Faber and Faber.
