Ivy Compton-Burnett

05 June 1884 - 27 August 1969

Standard Name: Compton-Burnett, Ivy

Birth Name: Ivy Compton-Burnett

ICB published twenty novels: the first while she was in her twenties, in 1911, but the first one to use her mature and startlingly original style when she was forty, in 1925. From the beginning she was praised by critics (sometimes a chorus, sometimes a few lone voices) but sold less well than she would have liked. She was a paradox: a person shaped by Victorian values and social hierarchies, whose novels—composed largely of razor-sharp dialogue—dismantle those values and hierarchies from within.

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Connections

Connections	Author name Sort ascending	Excerpt
Literary responses	Charlotte Yonge	The Daisy Chain's popularity was long-lasting, though not so intense as that of The Heir of Redclyffe. Jane Austen 's nephew James Austen-Leigh compared it to the work of Austen and Scott ...
Literary responses	Virginia Woolf	Novelist Angus Wilson , in the course of an otherwise notably fair and sensitive review for The Observer, said that VW 's her reputation had been overestimated. Spurling, Hilary. Secrets of a Woman’s Heart. Hodder and Stoughton. 220 On this Ivy Compton-Burnett commented: Ugly...
Literary responses	Dorothy Whipple	DW was an unacknowledged favourite of Ivy Compton-Burnett and evidently of Elizabeth Taylor too, since Taylor borrowed for her novel Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont from the opening of a story among Whipple's papers, which...
Occupation	Elizabeth Taylor	ET wrote amusingly of the horror of appearing on a television programme about books, filmed at Birmingham: sitting on spindly chairs under dazzling lights with other participants (Angus Wilson , whom she liked...
Literary responses	Elizabeth Taylor	Julia Strachey and Pamela Hansford Johnson both slammed A Wreath of Roses. Beauman, Nicola. The Other Elizabeth Taylor. Persephone Books. 214-15 ET herself felt that it expanded her range, but that the result was not successful: that she had produced a cold...
Literary responses	Elizabeth Taylor	Ivy Compton-Burnett wrote to her friend ET of her great and lasting pleasure in this novel. Spurling, Hilary. Secrets of a Woman’s Heart. Hodder and Stoughton. 270 The Book Marketing Council included it on its list of Best Novels of Our Time. Nevertheless most...
Literary responses	Elizabeth Taylor	This novel too was praised by Ivy Compton-Burnett . Spurling, Hilary. Secrets of a Woman’s Heart. Hodder and Stoughton. 284 Kingsley Amis , in a retrospective essay on ET 's career, noticed her ability to combine an often withering disgust for hypocrisy and self-delusion with...
Textual Production	Elizabeth Taylor	Robert Liddell preserved the letters that ET wrote him from 1953 onwards. In his book he quotes up to five pages of detailed accounts of visits to Ivy Compton-Burnett .
Reception	Elizabeth Taylor	Although she received some glowing reviews throughout her career from some of the most distinguished of her novelistic peers, ET has also been damned with faint praise. She has been called both the modern man's...
Friends, Associates	Elizabeth Taylor	Friends said that ET was very shy, but cared very much for very few people. Liddell, Robert, and Francis King. Elizabeth and Ivy. Peter Owen. 44 She was lucky in that Ivy Compton-Burnett (who was a generation older than she was, and notoriously difficult) and...
Literary responses	Christina Stead	CS now received her first enthusiastic review from the Times Literary Supplement—and the first to be written by a woman, Marigold Johnson . Johnson mentioned that [d]istinguished American writers had been extravagant in their...
Occupation	Freya Stark	FS expressed a strong admiration for Jourdain and her intellectual accomplishments: in letters to her mother, she outlined plans for a writing career on the model of Jourdain's. Stark met Jourdain's partner, Ivy Compton-Burnett ...
Occupation	Muriel Spark	She later implied that she got this job on the strength of sharing her enthusiasm for Ivy Compton-Burnett with a woman at the local Employment Bureau . She described the work as wonderfully interesting. I...
Intertextuality and Influence	Muriel Spark	The story takes place at Geneva in Switzerland (transferred from the Italian scene of the real-llife original), on an estate owned by a Baron Klopstock, among characters of diverse national origins. The protagonist, Lister the...
Literary responses	Muriel Spark	Ivy Compton-Burnett , who always disliked religious sentiment and religious writing, was severe on MS . She described her early novels as Not at all good. . . . I don't like novels that tell...

Timeline

1826

The Royal Society of Literature received its charter; it had been founded several years previously.

9 December 2006-17 July 2007

The National Portrait Gallery in London mounted an exhibition of photographs of women writers, mostly novelists, from 1920 to 1960.

Texts

Compton-Burnett, Ivy. A Family and a Fortune. Gollancz, 1939.

Compton-Burnett, Ivy. A Father and His Fate. Gollancz, 1957.

Compton-Burnett, Ivy. A God and His Gifts. Gollancz, 1963.

Compton-Burnett, Ivy. A Heritage and Its History. Gollancz, 1959.

Compton-Burnett, Ivy. A House and Its Head. Heinemann, 1935.

Compton-Burnett, Ivy. Brothers and Sisters. Heath Cranton, 1929.

Burkhart, Charles, and Ivy Compton-Burnett. “Critical Epilogue”. The Last and the First, Gollancz, 1971, pp. 151-9.

Compton-Burnett, Ivy. Darkness and Day. Gollancz, 1951.

Compton-Burnett, Ivy. Daughters and Sons. Gollancz, 1937.

Compton-Burnett, Ivy. Dolores. W. Blackwood and Sons, 1911.

Compton-Burnett, Ivy. Elders and Betters. Gollancz, 1944.

Sprigge, Elizabeth, and Ivy Compton-Burnett. “Foreword”. The Last and the First, Gollancz, 1971, pp. 7-12.

Compton-Burnett, Ivy. Manservant and Maidservant. Victor Gollancz, 1947.

Compton-Burnett, Ivy. Men and Wives. Heinemann, 1931.

Compton-Burnett, Ivy. More Women than Men. William Heinemann, 1933.

Compton-Burnett, Ivy. Mother and Son. Gollancz, 1955.

Compton-Burnett, Ivy. Parents and Children. Gollancz, 1941.

Compton-Burnett, Ivy. Pastors and Masters. Heath Cranton, 1925.

Compton-Burnett, Ivy et al. The Last and the First. Gollancz, 1971.

Compton-Burnett, Ivy. The Mighty and Their Fall. Gollancz, 1961.

Compton-Burnett, Ivy. The Present and the Past. Gollancz, 1953.

Compton-Burnett, Ivy. Two Worlds and Their Ways. Gollancz, 1949.