Dorothy Whipple

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DW was a popular and successful serious novelist from the 1920s to the 1950s, who also published short stories and a delightful childhood autobiography, and from whose notebooks a form of adult literary autobiography was compiled after her death. She lived all her life in Blackburn, Lancashire (where most of her fiction is set), and Yorkshire. Although forays to London kept her in touch with the literary world of her day, her provincial status was probably a factor in her quick descent into critical oblivion, even while her novels were regularly reprinted. The most recent wave of reprints has brought her name before the public again but has not as yet generated a critical dialogue.
Colour photograph of a blue plaque on the brick wall of Dorothy Whipple's birthplace in Blackburn, Lancs. The plaque has a coat of arms at the top, and reads "The novelist Dorothy Whipple (née Stirrup) (1893-1966) was born in this house on 26th February 1893."

Milestones

26 February 1893

Dorothy Stirrup (later Whipple) was born at 9 Edgeware Road in Blackburn, Lancashire, the second of eight children of whom six lived to grow up.
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.
Whipple, Dorothy. The Other Day. Cedric Chivers.
prelims, 4

1953

DW 's Someone at a Distance, her final novel and her only one not set in or around Blackburn or Nottingham, is seen by Nicola Beauman as her most important book.
“Bowker’s Global Books in Print”. globalbooksinprint.com.
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.

14 September 1966

DW died of a stroke at the Royal Infirmary, Blackburn.
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.

Biography

Birth and Family

26 February 1893

Dorothy Stirrup (later Whipple) was born at 9 Edgeware Road in Blackburn, Lancashire, the second of eight children of whom six lived to grow up.
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.
Whipple, Dorothy. The Other Day. Cedric Chivers.
prelims, 4

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