Naomi Mitchison

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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.
  • BirthName: Naomi Mary Margaret Haldane
  • Nicknames: Nou; Me
  • Married: Mitchison
  • Titled: Lady
    Though she was officially Lady Mitchison from 1964, NM never used the title.
    Mitchison, Naomi. As It Was: Small Talk . . . / All Change Here. Richard Drew, 1988.
    family tree
Black-and-white portrait of Naomi Mitchison. Her hair is pinned at the sides of her head in two buns and she is wearing a fuzzy sweater with two pom poms at the collar.

Milestones

1 November 1897

Naomi Haldane (later NM ) was born in the home of her maternal grandparents in Edinburgh.
Benton, Jill. Naomi Mitchison: A Biography. Pandora, 1992.
1

Easter 1931

NM published another historical novel, The Corn King and the Spring Queen, called by some her major or best-known work.
Benton, Jill. Naomi Mitchison: A Biography. Pandora, 1992.
13
Mitchison, Naomi. The Corn King and the Spring Queen. Jonathan Cape, 1931.
8
Calder, Jenni. The Nine Lives of Naomi Mitchison. Virago, 1997.
96

November 1970

NM completed the draft of her second science fiction novel: Solution Three, then titled The Clone Mums.
Squier, Susan M., and Naomi Mitchison. “Naomi Mitchison: The Feminist Art of Making Things Difficult”. Solution Three, Feminist Press at The City University of New York, 1995, pp. 161-83.
161

August 1975

NM published her second science fiction novel: Solution Three (formerly The Clone Mums).
British Books in Print. J. Whitaker and Sons, 1874–1987.
1976
Squier, Susan M., and Naomi Mitchison. “Naomi Mitchison: The Feminist Art of Making Things Difficult”. Solution Three, Feminist Press at The City University of New York, 1995, pp. 161-83.
180

By mid-June 1983

NM published Not By Bread Alone, another work of science fiction.
Morton, Brian. “PAX antipodica”. Times Literary Supplement, No. 4185, 17 June 1983, p. 642.
642
Benton, Jill. Naomi Mitchison: A Biography. Pandora, 1992.
161

31 May 1991

NM published two last books, both short historical novels: The Oath-Takers, set in ninth-century Europe, and Sea-Green Ribbons, set in seventeenth-century England.
Blackwell’s Online Bookshop. http://Bookshop.Blackwell.co.uk.
Calder, Jenni. The Nine Lives of Naomi Mitchison. Virago, 1997.
287

11 January 1999

NM died, aged a hundred and one.
Jeger, Lena. “Taking notes on the century: Naomi Mitchison”. Guardian Weekly, 24 Jan. 1999, p. 26.
26

Biography

Birth

1 November 1897

Naomi Haldane (later NM ) was born in the home of her maternal grandparents in Edinburgh.
Benton, Jill. Naomi Mitchison: A Biography. Pandora, 1992.
1

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