Pamela Hansford Johnson

29 May 1912 - 18 June 1981

PHJ had a long and prolific writing career, from before the second world war until late twentieth century. She is remembered primarily as a novelist (with twenty-seven titles),

Hadley, Tessa. “He wants me no more”. London Review of Books, No. 2, pp. 29 -30.

though she also wrote poetry, drama, memoirs, and political and social commentary.

Milestones

29 May 1912

PHJ was born at 53 Battersea Rise, Clapham, South London, in a built-up area that had been fields when her grandfather built the house about thirty years before.

Lindblad, Ishrat. Pamela Hansford Johnson. Twayne, 1982.

Johnson, Pamela Hansford. Important to Me. Macmillan; Scribner, 1974.

11, 115

By April 1935

PHJ published her first novel, This Bed Thy Centre, written during an illness which gave her two months off her job at the bank.

Blain, Virginia, Patricia Clements, and Isobel Grundy, editors. The Feminist Companion to Literature in English: Women Writers from the Middle Ages to the Present. Yale University Press; Batsford, 1990.

Lindblad, Ishrat. Pamela Hansford Johnson. Twayne, 1982.

192

18 June 1981

PHJ died after several strokes (she had emphysema), nearly a year after her second husband 's death.

John Halperin 's life of her husband gives the date as one day later.

Halperin, John. C.P. Snow: An Oral Biography. Harvester, 1983.

269n

Matthew, Henry Colin Gray, Brian Harrison, and Lawrence Goldman, editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.

Halperin, John. C.P. Snow: An Oral Biography. Harvester, 1983.

269n

Biography

Birth and Family

29 May 1912

PHJ was born at 53 Battersea Rise, Clapham, South London, in a built-up area that had been fields when her grandfather built the house about thirty years before.

Lindblad, Ishrat. Pamela Hansford Johnson. Twayne, 1982.

Johnson, Pamela Hansford. Important to Me. Macmillan; Scribner, 1974.

11, 115