Pamela Hansford Johnson

29 May 1912 - 18 June 1981

Standard Name: Johnson, Pamela Hansford

Birth Name: Pamela Hansford Johnson

Pseudonym: Nap Lombard

Married Name: Pamela Hansford Snow

Titled: Baroness Snow

PHJ had a long and prolific writing career, from before the second world war until late twentieth century. She is remembered primarily as a novelist (with twenty-seven titles),

Hadley, Tessa. “He wants me no more”. London Review of Books, No. 2, pp. 29 -30.

though she also wrote poetry, drama, memoirs, and political and social commentary.

Full profile

Connections

Connections Sort descending	Author name	Excerpt
Family and Intimate relationships	Dylan Thomas	His first serious love-affair was with Pamela Hansford Johnson , like him an aspiring writer. They corresponded for several months before they met and were, as they had expected to be, mutually attracted. They fell...
Friends, Associates	Olivia Manning	OM 's friends included a number of fellow-writers: William Gerhardi , Ivy Compton-Burnett (whom she had first met before the war, at a party given by Rose Macaulay , and whose work she deeply admired),...
Friends, Associates	Susan Hill	While studying at King's CollegeSH , an aspiring writer, wrote to novelist Pamela Hansford Johnson and her writer husband C. P. Snow for advice on the profession. The couple answered her letters and even...
Intertextuality and Influence	Muriel Spark	In a private joke, MS filled Dougal's notes for his ghosted autobiography with clichés like thrilled to his touch,living a lie, etc., every one of which she had found in the published writings of...
Intertextuality and Influence	Susan Hill	I would come home, do my homework, and then write my novel in what little time was left. Sanderson, Caroline. “Interview, Susan Hill”. Mslexia, No. 48, pp. 13 -15. 14 Novelist Pamela Hansford Johnson not only encouraged her in the writing of this book, but also...
Literary responses	Aldous Huxley	This text, wrote novelist Pamela Hansford Johnson , opened miraculous doors for her and a whole group of her literary-minded young friends. Johnson, Pamela Hansford. Important to Me. Macmillan; Scribner, 1974. 82
Literary responses	F. Tennyson Jesse	The New Yorker described the letters as having vigour, clarity, humour and elegance, and found FTJ and her husband a tough pair of gentle writers. Colenbrander, Joanna. A Portrait of Fryn. A. Deutsch, 1984. 213 In London, Pamela Hansford Johnson called the...
Literary responses	Virginia Woolf	VW had been ill while she was writing this book and was acutely anxious about its quality: she gave the manuscript to Leonard to read with the brief of pronouncing whether or not it was...
Literary responses	Joanna Cannan	These books were praised by a whole roster of other women novelists: Elizabeth Bowen , Phyllis Bentley , and Pamela Hansford Johnson . Bowen observed of the first that there was much more to this...
Literary responses	Agatha Christie	AC , a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, received the Mystery Writers of America Grand Master Award (1954), the degree of DLitt from the University of Exeter (1961), and a letter addressed simply...
Literary responses	Olivia Manning	Amid a chorus of praise for this novel, Pamela Hansford Johnson 's statement that it was among the ten best novels written by women in the past twenty-five years attracted ridicule for its mathematical approach...
Literary responses	Ivy Compton-Burnett	Leonard Woolf's decision proved a mistake. The book was not only praised to the skies by young, advanced reviewers, but also made the secondary Book of the Month for May by the newly-formed Book Society
Literary responses	Ivy Compton-Burnett	Pamela Hansford Johnson thought this both the most attractive and one of the finest of ICB 's books, verging on the lyrical. Johnson, Pamela Hansford. Important to Me. Macmillan; Scribner, 1974. Johnson, Important 193, 195
Literary responses	Ivy Compton-Burnett	Of this novel ICB wrote, I have never had such superficial reviews. Spurling, Hilary. Secrets of a Woman’s Heart. Hodder and Stoughton, 1984. 190 They did, however, praise the book, especially in the case of reviewers who were also novelists, like Elizabeth Bowen , Pamela Hansford Johnson
Literary responses	Muriel Spark	The London theatre critics were scathing, with only two exceptions (though one of these, Harold Hobson , carried a lot of weight). Pamela Hansford Johnson trounced the play on the BBC 's radio programme The...

Timeline

1 April 1939

General Franco , Nationalist victor in the Spanish Civil War, declared the conflict over. Republican soldiers had been fleeing over the border to France for some time, and Madrid had fallen on 28 March.

22 June 1941

Hitler 's invasion of the Soviet Union (named Operation Barbarossa, and in contravention of the German-Soviet non-aggression pact of 23 August 1939) began with a surprise attack at dawn which destroyed a thousand Soviet planes...

September 1949

PEN International held a conference in Venice. Delegates included W. H. Auden , C. P. Snow , Pamela Hansford Johnson , and Cecily Mackworth .

27 April 1966

Ian Brady and Myra Hindley went on trial at Chester for the sexual assault and murder of five girls and boys aged between ten and seventeen; they were sentenced to life imprisonment.