Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
Marghanita Laski
-
Standard Name: Laski, Marghanita
Birth Name: Esther Pearl Laski
Nickname: Marghanita
Married Name: Esther Pearl Howard
Pseudonym: Sarah Russell
ML
, a cultural force in twentieth-century Britain, published six novels, four biographies (one on multiple subjects), an anti-nuclear play, a collection of children's stories, three quasi-scientific investigations into secular and religious experiences, and various short stories, including a ghost story and an anti-nuclear fiction. She also edited various collections: poetry, children's stories, and essays on Charlotte Yonge
. Her articles and book reviews appeared in the Times, the Times Literary Supplement, and elsewhere. She also wrote three film scripts, co-authored a television series, and made a substantial contribution of quotations for the Oxford English Dictionary. ML
's novels address class issues and gender barriers, often satirically. They reflect the political, social, and economic anxieties and tensions felt in England during the Second World War and the Cold War. A self-professed atheist, ML wrote secular studies of ecstatic experiences.
"Marghanita Laski" by Sasha / Stringer,1934-06-13.Retrieved from https://www.gettyimages.co.uk/detail/news-photo/english-novelist-and-critic-marghanita-laski-niece-of-news-photo/3365682.
Reviews of A Game of Hide and Seek included high praise from Marghanita Laski
and Elizabeth Bowen
(some consolation to ET
for her problems with her US publisher), but also carping which she found deeply...
Literary responses
Vita Sackville-West
British Book News took occasion to remark that VSW
possessed an alert if somewhat superficial command of character.
British Book News. British Council.
(1953): 204
The Times Literary Supplement praised the book, but Marghanita Laski
in The Observer was extremely cutting.
Glendinning, Victoria. Vita. Penguin, 1984.
375-6
Literary responses
Barbara Pym
The sales of this second novel nearly doubled those of Pym's first: Excellent Women sold 5,477 copies in the two months to June 1952, while Some Tame Gazelle sold only 3,722 in the thirteen years...
Literary responses
Barbara Pym
Initial comment included reviews or articles by A. S. Byatt
and Marghanita Laski
.
Allen, Orphia Jane. Barbara Pym: Writing a Life. Scarecrow Press, 1994.
Allen, Orphia Jane. Barbara Pym: Writing a Life. Scarecrow Press, 1994.
40
but effectively ironic, witty view of academia. Anne Wyatt-Brown
Literary responses
Frances Hodgson Burnett
The American reviews were highly flattering. The reviewer for the Boston Transcript could think of no more powerful work from a woman's hand in the English language, not even George Eliot
at her best.
qtd. in
Gerzina, Gretchen. Frances Hodgson Burnett. Chatto and Windus, 2004.
67
Literary responses
Frances Hodgson Burnett
FHB
's remark about her hero while he was still in process of composition—that I should not be surprised if he were very popular—turned out to be an extreme understatement.
qtd. in
Gerzina, Gretchen. Frances Hodgson Burnett. Chatto and Windus, 2004.
109
Fauntleroy was, says...
Literary responses
Georgette Heyer
Laski
argued that the taste for popular fiction stemmed from the fact that the serious modern novel had decided to deny itself the amenity of the shapely story satisfactorily resolved, so that compulsive novel readers...
Literary responses
Patricia Highsmith
Marghanita Laski
, reviewing for the Listener, felt confirmed in her dislike for PH
's work by detecting a strong flavour of being motivated less by pity for animals than by distaste for men.
qtd. in
Wilson, Andrew Norman. Beautiful Shadow: A Life of Patricia Highsmith. Bloomsbury, 2003.
331
Literary responses
Frances Hodgson Burnett
When this now-famous book first appeared, reviewers welcomed it, but without any sense of how special it would prove to be.
Gerzina, Gretchen. Frances Hodgson Burnett. Chatto and Windus, 2004.
265
Marghanita Laski
in 1950 judged this to be as much better than A...
Literary responses
Frances Hodgson Burnett
Marghanita Laski
called this a somewhat fanciful account of her childhood.
Laski, Marghanita. Mrs. Ewing, Mrs. Molesworth, and Mrs. Hodgson Burnett. A. Barker, 1950.
Religion seems not to have been of any great importance to her during her early life. She once attended a seance, and found a lot of idiotic blatant humbug going on & some very nice...