Mary Wesley

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Standard Name: Wesley, Mary
Birth Name: Mary Aline Farmar
Pseudonym: Mary Wesley
Married Name: Mary Aline Eady
Titled: Mary Aline Eady, Lady Swinfen
Married Name: Mary Aline Siepmann
MW won some notoriety by beginning her writing career proper at the age of seventy, when she published her first novel for adults. After this she kept up for some time the rate of one new book a year. (Before this she had published two of her three novels for children and drafted several adult works.) Late in life she added a volume that combines memoir with topographical writing. Her comic, satirical fiction, in which middle-aged or elderly female protagonists look back at their early lives (often shadowed by war) and reflect on sexual indiscretions (often still continuing), won her very great if not enduring popularity; she became known for sexually explicit writing, in comic or horrific, non-idealised style. Patrick Parrinder regards her as a last celebrant of the vanishing life of the English upper and upper-middle classes.
Parrinder, Patrick. “Mizzlers”. London Review of Books, pp. 19-20.
19

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
Reception Antonia White
AW had used Sylvaine's name for a fictional actress flourishing some years before the real June Sylvaine was born. Her publisher, Eyre and Spottiswoode , played safe by withdrawing copies of the book. The case...
Intertextuality and Influence Ann Oakley
This is the first of AO 's novels without a central female protagonist; and the result is a certain lack of focus. The story is set at a resort on the coast of Turkey...
Friends, Associates Graham Greene
Personal friends who were Catholics or converted to that faith during the course of their friendships with Greene included Muriel Spark , Antonia White and the future writer Mary Wesley .
Friends, Associates Antonia White
While working for the Special Operations ExecutivePolitical Intelligence Department , AW met Graham Greene , Simone Weil , and Kathleen Raine .
Chitty, Susan. Now To My Mother. Weidenfeld and Nicholson.
137
Early in the war, as she gradually moved closer to the Church, she wrote...
Family and Intimate relationships Antonia White
Other lovers reputedly included George Barker , writer and journalist, Eric Siepmann (who was later married to the novelist Mary Wesley ), Jamaican sculptor Ronald Moody , and Ian Henderson .
Vaux, Anna. “Biscuits. Oh good!”. London Review of Books, pp. 32-4.
32, 33
Dunn, Jane. Antonia White: A Life. Jonathan Cape.
182-3, 184, 198

Timeline

No timeline events available.

Texts

Wesley, Mary. A Dubious Legacy. Bantam; Viking, 1992.
Wesley, Mary. A Sensible Life. Bantam; Viking, 1990.
Wesley, Mary. An Imaginative Experience. Bantam; Viking, 1994.
Wesley, Mary. Haphazard House. J. M. Dent, 1983.
Wesley, Mary. Harnessing Peacocks. Macmillan, 1985.
Wesley, Mary. Jumping the Queue. Macmillan, 1983.
Wesley, Mary. Not That Sort of Girl. Macmillan, 1987.
Wesley, Mary. Part of the Furniture. Bantam, 1997.
Wesley, Mary, and Kim Sayer. Part of the Scenery. Bantam, 2001.
Wesley, Mary. Second Fiddle. Macmillan, 1988.
Wesley, Mary, and Sarah Garland. Speaking Terms. Faber, 1969.
Wesley, Mary. The Camomile Lawn. Macmillan, 1984.
Wesley, Mary. The Sixth Seal. Mamillan, 1969.
Wesley, Mary. The Vacillations of Poppy Carew. Macmillan, 1986.