E. M. Delafield

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Standard Name: Delafield, E. M.
Birth Name: Edmée Elizabeth Monica de la Pasture
Married Name: Edmée Elizabeth Monica Dashwood
Pseudonym: E. M. Delafield
Pseudonym: E. M. D.
Pseudonym: Sportswoman
Used Form: Edmee Elizabeth Monica de la Pasture
Used Form: Edmee Elizabeth Monica Dashwood
EMD 's charming, witty novels are characterized by acute observation and good-humoured social satire. Her stories often draw from her own experiences—as an Edwardian débutante, a novice in a religious order, a war worker, and an upper-middle-class wife and mother in a modernizing Georgian world. At her best (as in Diary of a Provincial Lady) she offers lively, amusing insights into the foibles of her own class and contemporary society at large. Often compared to Jane Austen , she has been praised for her almost uncanny gift for converting the small and familiar dullnesses of everyday life into laughter.
Beauman, Nicola, and E. M. Delafield. “Introduction”. The Diary of a Provincial Lady, Rprt ed. , Virago Press, p. vii - xvii.
xvii
She also wrote plays, short stories, literary criticism, sketches, war propaganda, and a travel book.
Black-and-white portrait of E.M. Delafield, wearing a cloche hat that gathers at one side with what looks like animal fur and an arrow brooch in the centre, 1922.

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
Travel Gladys Henrietta Schütze
GHS later attended PEN conferences at Barcelona and Paris, in Hungary and in Poland. At Barcelona she was a joint delegate with E. M. Delafield .
Schütze, Gladys Henrietta. More Ha’pence Than Kicks. Jarrolds.
219, 221, 223
Friends, Associates Catharine Amy Dawson Scott
Neighbours and guests of CADS in Cornwall included J. D. Beresford , Dorothy Richardson , and E. M. Delafield . Noël Coward came for a miserable weekend, when he was ostracized by the family because...
Textual Production Angela Thirkell
When Hamish Hamilton published an anonymous historical novel, The Bazalgettes, in 1935 while AT was researching Harriette Wilson, she was happily flattered to have it widely attributed to her. In fact it was by...
Textual Features Sue Townsend
Adrian Mole carried the genes of the British talent for humour, as formerly represented by Stella Gibbons and Angela Thirkell , but in a newly anarchic and ungenteel form. Like Richmal Crompton in the William...
Education Charlotte Yonge
The young CY seems to have been totally unlike her adult self: a noisy, excitable child with a great capacity for screaming.
Battiscombe, Georgina, and E. M. Delafield. Charlotte Mary Yonge: The Story of an Uneventful Life. Constable and Company.
43
Her parents followed the system of Richard and Maria Edgeworth for bringing...
Textual Features Charlotte Yonge
E. M. Delafield and others note that its heroine, Elizabeth Woodbourne, seems to be a self-portrait.
Delafield, E. M., and Georgina Battiscombe. “Introduction”. Charlotte Mary Yonge: The Story of an Uneventful Life, Constable and Company, pp. 9-15.
9
Literary responses Charlotte Yonge
E. M. Delafield writes that during the 1940s CY retained wide popularity: that the London Library 's copies of her books were often checked out by readers, and that when Delafield wrote to the Times...
Reception E. H. Young
Though she has had no academic attention until very recently, EHY appealed to a wide readership. Her works remained steadily in print during her lifetime. Writers of blurbs for her covers included E. M. Delafield

Timeline

No timeline events available.

Texts

Delafield, E. M. The Provincial Lady in Wartime. Macmillan, 1940.
Delafield, E. M. The War-Workers. Heinemann, 1918.
Delafield, E. M. The Way Things Are. Hutchinson, 1927.
Delafield, E. M. The Way Things Are. Harper, 1928.
Delafield, E. M. Three Marriages. Macmillan, 1939.
Delafield, E. M. “To See Ourselves”. Famous Plays of 1931, Gollancz, 1931.
Delafield, E. M. Turn Back the Leaves. Macmillan, 1930.
Delafield, E. M. Zella Sees Herself. Heinemann, 1917.
Delafield, E. M. Zella Sees Herself. Macmillan, 1930.