Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
Naomi Mitchison
-
Standard Name: Mitchison, Naomi
Birth Name: Naomi Mary Margaret Haldane
Nickname: Nou
Nickname: Me
Married Name: Naomi Mary Margaret Mitchison
Titled: Lady Naomi Mary Margaret Mitchison
During her life of over a century (she narrowly missed living from the nineteenth into the twenty-first) NM
averaged almost a book a year. She published novels, short stories, diaries, poetry, travel books, essays, and writing for children, all of them informed with the same vivid interest in the world around her and burning desire for its social betterment.
Brave New World (titled from the words of Shakespeare
's Miranda on her first sight of human social community) is in some ways remarkably prescient, in its forecast of extra-uterine pregnancy and a universal drug...
Friends, Associates
Winifred Holtby
Through her work with the Six Point Group
and Time and Tide, WH
met the founder of both, Margaret Haig, Lady Rhondda
. Their professional relationship grew into a friendship, and WH
dedicated her...
Friends, Associates
Bessie Head
In Francistown she again was able to draw on the generosity of friends who perceived her literary potential: Nini Ettlinger
, who gave her, under the appearance of a loan, the money to buy a...
Textual Features
Bessie Head
She dedicated it to Naomi Mitchison
, who loves Botswana.
Eilersen, Gillian Stead. Bessie Head. Wits University Press.
109
Elements in this fiction refract recent developments in BH
's own life: her male protagonist, Makhaya Maseko, owes something to her husband's story and...
Education
Antonia Fraser
AF
(like the future Naomi Mitchison
before her) attended the Dragon School
in Oxford (a boys' preparatory school, taking children from about eight to thirteen). In her day it had twenty girls out of a...
Education
William Empson
Sent to preparatory school at the age of seven, WE
obtained the rest of his education on scholarships, first at Winchester School
, where his schoolmates included future academics William Hayter
and John Sparrow
and...
Occupation
William Empson
WE
was an enthusiast for Basic English (a simplified form of the language which he favoured not only for exchanges among scientists and others from different language groups, but also as an introduction to the...
politics
Barbara Cartland
BC
was one of Ronald
's chief supporters in his brief career as a Conservative MP: she joined him on public campaigns, advised him informally on speechwriting and networking, provided him with a deposit of...
Brittain, Vera. Chronicle of Friendship. Editor Bishop, Alan, Gollancz.
39-40
Friends, Associates
Stella Benson
SB
met many writers during this stay in England. Her old friend Margery Spring Rice
brought her together with Naomi Mitchison
, who had recently approached her by letter.
Mitchison, Naomi. You May Well Ask: A Memoir 1920-1940. Gollancz.
127-9
Friends, Associates
Stella Benson
This summer she spent a holiday at Varengeville in Normandy, with Naomi Mitchison
. She also met Sydney Schiff
(at Chesham in Buckinghamshire), and on 31 August 1925 had her first meeting with...
Literary responses
Stella Benson
It received favourable reviews both in the Dial and in Punch. For Naomi Mitchison
(for whom this was the first book by SB
that she had read), it was queer to find someone who...
Timeline
No timeline events available.
Texts
Mitchison, Naomi. What do you think yourself? Scottish short stories. Paul Harris, 1982.
Mitchison, Naomi. When the Bough Breaks, and Other Stories. Cape, 1924.
Mitchison, Naomi. You May Well Ask: A Memoir 1920-1940. Gollancz, 1979.
