Dorothy Bussy

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As a writer DB is best known for Olivia, her immensely successful, anonymous or rather pseudonymous, autobiographical novel, published in 1949, about a young girl's development at a French boarding school in the later nineteenth century. She was also a translator, who spent many years rendering André Gide 's writings into English, a journalist, and an art critic.
Black and white photo of Dorothy Bussy outside a house. She is wearing loose-fitting trousers and a loose lace-patterned shirt belted at the waist. She has small wire-rimmed spectacles, a simple black ribbon around her neck, and short hair with a fringe. She has her head slightly on one side, an open book tucked under her arm, and a slight, quizzical smile.

Milestones

24 July 1865
Dorothy Strachey (later DB ) was born, the third of the thirteen Strachey children.
Some sources date her birth to 1866.
Lambert, Jean, André Gide, and Dorothy Bussy. “Introduction”. Selected Letters of André Gide and Dorothy Bussy, edited by Richard Tedeschi and Richard Tedeschi, Oxford University Press, 1983, p. vii - xxiii.
viii
1904
DB , who later became known for translating much of Gide 's fiction, first reached print with her translation of Auguste Bréal 's Velasquez.
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray, Brian Harrison, and Lawrence Goldman, editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.
1949
DB published her autobiographical lesbian novel, Olivia, with the Hogarth Press . The work carries the pseudonymous ascription by Olivia.
British Library Catalogue.
Clapp, Susannah, and Dorothy Bussy. “Afterword”. Olivia, Virago, 1987, pp. 111 - 14.
111
1 May 1960
DB died of old age
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray, Brian Harrison, and Lawrence Goldman, editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.
at ninety-four. Her daughter Janie Bussy had died as the result of an accident only weeks before this, but Dorothy was senile, and so did not know of Janie's death.
Caws, Mary Ann, and Sarah Bird Wright. Bloomsbury and France: Art and Friends. Oxford University Press, 2000.
348

Biography

Birth

24 July 1865
Dorothy Strachey (later DB ) was born, the third of the thirteen Strachey children.
Some sources date her birth to 1866.
Lambert, Jean, André Gide, and Dorothy Bussy. “Introduction”. Selected Letters of André Gide and Dorothy Bussy, edited by Richard Tedeschi and Richard Tedeschi, Oxford University Press, 1983, p. vii - xxiii.
viii

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