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
Textual Production Margery Lawrence
ML 's ghost stories have been frequently anthologised. They appear in, for instance, Fifty Strangest Stories Ever Told (1937), The Virago Book of Ghost Stories: The Twentieth Century (1987), and Vampire Stories (1993).
Clute, John, and John Grant, editors. The Encyclopedia of Fantasy. St Martin’s Press.
under Lawrence, Margery
Textual Production Storm Jameson
Jameson had been approached by the Ministry of Information once the USA had entered World War II, for suggestions on how to cement Anglo-American relations.
Jameson, Storm. Journey from the North. Harper and Row.
524
The resulting volume includes work by Phyllis Bentley ,...
Literary responses Storm Jameson
The appearance of Europe to Let struck a blow at SJ 's in any case faltering friendship with Vera Brittain . They quarrelled over the character Olga (Johnson) Stehlík in The Hour of Prague...
Textual Features Penelope Fitzgerald
PF 's letters are highly observant of the people around her, often satirically, sometimes lovingly. From long before she became an author, she was using her letters to craft both character and narrative. Rosemary Hill...
death Elizabeth De la Pasture
EDP died at nearly eighty, having outlived her second husband by four years and her famous daughter by two.
Waugh, Auberon et al. “Introduction”. The Unlucky Family, Folio Society, p. vii - xii.
vii
Author summary Elizabeth De la Pasture
EDP had a successful career as a popular playwright (few of whose dramas reached print) and novelist. She also wrote short stories for periodicals, and a single story for children which had great success a...
Family and Intimate relationships Elizabeth De la Pasture
EDP had two daughters from her first marriage. The elder, Edmée Elizabeth Monica De la Pasture (born on 9 June 1890), became the novelist E. M. Delafield —who, however, found her mother cold and distant...
Performance of text Elizabeth De la Pasture
EDP had many plays successfully staged. Apart from those that were dramatised from novel form, they included The Lonely Millionaires and Grace the Reformer, both 1906, neither of which appear to have been published...

Timeline

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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.