Rosamond Lehmann

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Standard Name: Lehmann, Rosamond
Birth Name: Rosamond Nina Lehmann
RL has received less critical attention than other women modernists, especially her closest literary colleagues Elizabeth Bowen and Virginia Woolf . However, after the reprinting of her work in the 1980s, her seven novels, her short stories, and one play became much better known. After the unexpected death of her daughter, RL ceased writing for about seven years. When she resumed she produced only one more novel, in addition to a memoir and spiritualist writings.
Black-and-white photo of Rosamond Lehmann. She is wearing a silk scarf, and her white hair is cut short. Behind her is a painting of a woman.

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
Textual Production Henry Green
Rosamond Lehmann and Goronwy Rees had been instrumental in introducing Green as a Hogarth Press author.
Lehmann, John. In My Own Time. Little, Brown.
222
Textual Production Stevie Smith
She asked Rosamond Lehmann for her opinion before the collection reached print.
Smith, Stevie. Me Again. Editors Barbera, Jack and William McBrien, Vintage.
265-6
Textual Production Elizabeth Bowen
This vintage volume was edited by a group of authors including Rosamond Lehmann and Cecil Day Lewis .
Glendinning, Victoria. Elizabeth Bowen. Alfred A. Knopf.
215
EB 's essay (in which sometimes aphoristic notes are lightly linked) was reprinted in her posthumous Pictures and Conversations.
Textual Production Q. D. Leavis
In her essays, reviews, introductions, and lectures, QDL also developed varied critiques of such authors as Charlotte Brontë , George Eliot , Charlotte Yonge , Marie Corelli , Edith Wharton , Naomi Mitchison , Amabel Williams-Ellis
Textual Production Dora Carrington
Using colours inspired by his Crown Derby china, she painted George Dadie Rylands 's rooms at King's College, Cambridge that same year. She painted rooms for Dorelia John , Rosamond Lehmann , and Julia Strachey
Textual Features Elizabeth Bowen
The novel has two heroines: Portia, a fifteen-year-old, and Anna Quayne, wife of Thomas Quayne. Portia, Thomas' half-sister, comes to live with the Quaynes in their Regent's Park house (based on EB 's own London...
Textual Features Marjorie Bowen
MB credits British women novelists for modifying the methods of the great European novelists, noting in particular Dorothy Richardson 's perfection of the stream-of-consciousness technique. She draws a contrast between Dorothy Richardson 's Miriam and...
Textual Features Mollie Panter-Downes
This novel has many modernist features. Nicola Beauman mentions the influence of Rosamond Lehmann , and also palpable is that of Virginia Woolf . The first, two-page chapter describes the Sussex village of Wealding and...
Reception Elizabeth Jenkins
Rosamond Lehmann recommended EJ 's writing to Carmen Callil for inclusion in the Virago Modern Classics series.
Callil, Carmen. “The stories of our lives”. Guardian Unlimited.
Reception Edith Mary Moore
In 1938, EMM 's name appeared in an early number of Kriticky Mesicnik, a Czech literary periodical edited by Václav Černý (reprinted in 1972 and 1992), in a list of British writers including Rosamond Lehmann
Publishing Olivia Manning
It was re-issued in 1984 in an omnibus volume from Virago together with two other novels about growing up female: Rosamond Lehmann 's The Weather in the Streets and Antonia White 's Frost in May.
Publishing Margiad Evans
She had been working on this collection as a whole since 1943, while one item, The Wicked Woman, dates from October 1933 (while she was writing Turf or Stone) and was printed in...
politics Marghanita Laski
On 30 October 1958 ML was one of the signatories to a letter to the editor of theTimes urging the government to cease testing nuclear weapons; others who signed included Peggy Ashcroft , Storm Jameson
Literary responses Stevie Smith
Novel on Yellow Paper was an immediate critical success. Appreciation expressed in reviews by Naomi Mitchison and Rosamond Lehmann laid the foundations for SS 's friendships with these and other writers.
Spalding, Frances. Stevie Smith: A Critical Biography. Faber and Faber.
125
Blain, Virginia et al., editors. The Feminist Companion to Literature in English: Women Writers from the Middle Ages to the Present. Yale University Press; Batsford.
A poet, Robert Nichols
Literary responses Stevie Smith
Rosamond Lehmann (already a friend) expressed some reservations in her review, mainly that the protagonist lets herself be caught in her illness and weakness and little-girlness.
Spalding, Frances. Stevie Smith: A Critical Biography. Faber and Faber.
143
SS was insulted, but after the women had...

Timeline

: The second number of Orion. A Miscellany...

Writing climate item

Autumn1945

The second number of Orion. A Miscellany appeared: Rosamond Lehmann was one of the editors, along with C. Day Lewis and Edwin Muir .

1946: John Lehmann founded his own publishing house...

Writing climate item

1946

John Lehmann founded his own publishing house at 6 Henrietta Street, London.

December 1984: The feminist publisher Virago Press, under...

Women writers item

December 1984

The feminist publisher Virago Press , under its editor Carmen Callil , launched its own bookshop in Covent Garden, London; the opening was performed by Rosamond Lehmann .

9 December 2006-17 July 2007: The National Portrait Gallery in London mounted...

Writing climate item

9 December 2006-17 July 2007

The National Portrait Gallery in London mounted an exhibition of photographs of women writers, mostly novelists, from 1920 to 1960.

Texts

Lehmann, Rosamond et al. A Man Seen Afar. Spearman, 1965.
Lehmann, Rosamond. A Note in Music. Chatto and Windus, 1930.
Lehmann, Rosamond. A Sea-Grape Tree. Collins, 1976.
Lehmann, Rosamond, and Jean Cocteau. Children of the Game. Harvill Press, 1955.
Lehmann, Rosamond. Dusty Answer. Chatto and Windus, 1927.
Lemarchand, Jacques. Geneviève. Translator Lehmann, Rosamond, John Lehmann, 1947.
Lehmann, Rosamond. Invitation to the Waltz. Chatto and Windus, 1932.
Lehmann, Rosamond. Letter to a Sister. Leonard and Virginia Woolf at the Hogarth Press, 1931.
Lehmann, Rosamond, and Cynthia Hill Sandys. Letters from Our Daughters. College of Psychic Science, 1971.
Lehmann, Rosamond. No More Music. Collins, 1939.
Bowen, Elizabeth. “Notes on Writing a Novel”. Orion: A Miscellany, edited by Rosamond Lehmann et al., Nicholson and Watson, 1945.
Lehmann, Rosamond. Rosamond Lehmann’s Album. Chatto and Windus, 1985.
Lehmann, Rosamond. The Ballad and the Source. Collins, 1944.
Lehmann, Rosamond. The Echoing Grove. Collins, 1953.
Lehmann, Rosamond. The Gypsy’s Baby and Other Stories. Collins, 1946.
Lehmann, Rosamond. “The Red-Haired Miss Daintreys”. Folios of New Writing, Spring 1940, edited by John Lehmann, 1stst ed, Hogarth Press, 1940.
Lehmann, Rosamond. The Swan in the Evening. Collins, 1967.
Lehmann, Rosamond. The Weather in the Streets. Collins, 1936.