Penelope Mortimer

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PM wrote (during the second half of the twentieth century) acerbic novels and stories about middle-class marriages and the frustrations of family life. She also wrote for newspapers and television, and collaborated with her second husband on a travel book. She published a biography of the Queen Mother and two volumes of an autobiography. A third volume was never printed.
  • BirthName: Penelope Ruth Fletcher
  • Nickname: Peggy
  • Married: Dimont; Mortimer
  • Pseudonym: Ann Temple
Black-and-white candid photo of Emily Mortimer seated on a chair in front of close blinds with the sun streaming through. She is holding a lit cigarette in her right hand and her expression looks serene.

Milestones

19 September 1918

Penelope Ruth Fletcher (later PM ) was born at Rhyl in Flintshire, Wales.
“Contemporary Authors”. Gale Databases: Literature Resource Centre-LRC.

1 October 1962

PM 's novel The Pumpkin Eater, about a woman miserable about her husband and obsessed with motherhood, and again codedly about her own marriage, turned out to be her first big success.
Lord, Graham. John Mortimer, The Devil’s Advocate. The Unauthorised Biography. Orion, 2005.
106
Mortimer, Penelope. About Time Too: 1940-1978. Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1993.
95, 97

June 1974

PM issued Long Distance, a novel which was also carried in its entirety in the New Yorker (something the magazine had not done since J. D. Salinger 's Raise High the Roofbeam, Carpenter, in 1955).
Gordon, Giles. “Obituary: Penelope Mortimer”. Guardian Weekly, 28 Oct. 1999, p. 26.
26
Mortimer, Penelope. About Time Too: 1940-1978. Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1993.
195

19 October 1999

PM died of lung cancer in a London hospice at the age of eighty-one.
Gordon, Giles. “Obituary: Penelope Mortimer”. Guardian Weekly, 28 Oct. 1999, p. 26.
26
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.
Lord, Graham. John Mortimer, The Devil’s Advocate. The Unauthorised Biography. Orion, 2005.
275

Biography

Birth and Family

19 September 1918

Penelope Ruth Fletcher (later PM ) was born at Rhyl in Flintshire, Wales.
“Contemporary Authors”. Gale Databases: Literature Resource Centre-LRC.

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