Muriel Box

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MB , who collaborated with her first husband, Sydney , in the mid twentieth century on numerous plays (the more than fifty which preceded the Second World War included two volumes of one-acters with all-female casts) and some film scripts, was also a remarkably versatile author on her own account. She was a solo scriptwriter and dramatist, a novelist (notable for the satirical, feminist, post-nuclear fantasy The Big Switch), autobiographer, biographer, and feminist publisher and editor. She has another claim to fame in being one of the first British women to direct films.
Numbers of works ascribed to her vary widely. The front of her autobiography lists, as well as nondramatic prose works and two solo plays, six plays or collections and fourteen screenplays co-authored with Sydney, and fourteen films directed by herself. The co-authored writings certainly, and probably other categories, are selected lists.
Black and white photograph of Muriel Box as film director, looking alertly forward with one hand on a large camera and the other holding an open script. Her dark, zippered jacket is open over a white shirt.

Milestones

22 September 1905
Muriel Baker (later MB ) was born in a small terrace house in Poplar Grove, New Malden, Surrey, the third and youngest child in her family.
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray, Brian Harrison, and Lawrence Goldman, editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.
22 October 1945
Muriel and Sydney Box 's film The Seventh Veil opened at Leicester Square Theatre (that is, cinema) and became a box-office hit. It brought them an Oscar for best original screenplay.
Box, Muriel. Odd Woman Out. Leslie Frewin, 1974.
182
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray, Brian Harrison, and Lawrence Goldman, editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.
under Sydney Box
14 March 1951
The play The Seventh Veil, adapted by Muriel and Sydney Box from their film of the same name, opened at the Prince's Theatre in London after the harrassing work of revision.
Box, Muriel. Odd Woman Out. Leslie Frewin, 1974.
210
By October 1964
MB published her second and best-known novel, The Big Switch, a satirical post-nuclear fantasy or science fiction about a future with women in command.
Dated from Bodleian Library acquisition stamp.
Solo: Search Oxford University Libraries Online.
1983
MB 's last book was Rebel Advocate: A Biography of Gerald Gardiner (formally Gerald Austin Gardiner, Baron Gardiner of Killiford ), her second husband.
The Bodleian Library 's copy is a bound, uncorrected proof marked Not for publication.
Solo: Search Oxford University Libraries Online.
18 May 1991
MB died at Mote End, Mill Hill, sixteen months after the death of her second husband .
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray, Brian Harrison, and Lawrence Goldman, editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.

Biography

Birth and Influences

22 September 1905
Muriel Baker (later MB ) was born in a small terrace house in Poplar Grove, New Malden, Surrey, the third and youngest child in her family.
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray, Brian Harrison, and Lawrence Goldman, editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.

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