Penelope Mortimer

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Standard Name: Mortimer, Penelope
Birth Name: Penelope Ruth Fletcher
Married Name: Penelope Ruth Dimont
Married Name: Penelope Ruth Mortimer
Pseudonym: Ann Temple
Nickname: Peggy
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.
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.

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
Family and Intimate relationships Nell Dunn
His parents, the distinguished wood-engraver Lettice Sandford and poet Christopher Sandford , took over the Golden Cockerel Press from Robert Gibbings during the great age of fine-press printing. Jeremy Sandford became well-known as a playwright...
Friends, Associates Bernice Rubens
It was a friend from Cardiff, the poet Dannie Abse , who introduced BR to her future husband. Rubens was an almost lifelong friend of Beryl Bainbridge . Other close friends were novelist Paul Bailey
Literary responses Muriel Spark
British Book News began to cool wirh this novel: this time her central character is scarcely a sufficiently plausible figure to dominate the story as the plot requires.
British Book News. British Council.
(1960): 289
But Storm Jameson found the...
Reception Jennifer Dawson
A more recent reviewer, twenty years after publication, oddly described the novel as pleasantly cool and quirky in feeling,
Craig, Patricia. “In brief”. Times Literary Supplement, No. 4282, 26 Apr. 1985, p. 479.
479
and at around the same date Margaret Crosland wrote of its immaturity in comparison with...
Textual Production Harold Pinter
Pinter was highly productive as a writer of screenplays, beginning with The Servant in 1963. This film, adapted from a novella by Robin Maugham and dealing with an employer (Dirk Bogarde ) who is...

Timeline

21 February 1924: The first issue appeared of the New Yorker...

Writing climate item

21 February 1924

The first issue appeared of the New Yorker magazine (still going strong in the twenty-first century).
Borne Back Daily. 2001, http://borneback.com/ .
21 February 2011
Kindley, Evan. “Ismism”. London Review of Books, Vol.
36
, No. 2, 23 Jan. 2014, pp. 33-5.
33

14 October 1958: Alan Sillitoe, husband of Ruth Fainlight,...

Writing climate item

14 October 1958

Alan Sillitoe , husband of Ruth Fainlight , had his first success with Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, a novel resulting from Robert Graves 's advice to write something honest about his native Nottingham.
Graves, Richard. Robert Graves and the White Goddess, 1940-85. Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1995.
286 and n
Sillitoe, Alan. Life without Armour. HarperCollins, 1995.
251, 263

1965: Giles Gordon did a series of interviews for...

Women writers item

1965

Giles Gordon did a series of interviews for The Scotsman with female authors: a species of writer that at the time wasn't particularly recognised, although it certainly had been in the previous century.
Gordon, Giles. “Reading Ann Quin’s Berg”. Context: A Forum for Literary Arts and Culture, 2001.

Texts

Mortimer, Penelope. A Villa in Summer. Michael Joseph, 1954.
Mortimer, Penelope. About Time. Allen Lane, 1979.
Mortimer, Penelope. About Time Too: 1940-1978. Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1993.
Mortimer, Penelope. Daddy’s Gone A-Hunting. Michael Joseph, 1958.
Mortimer, Penelope. Johanna. Secker and Warburg, 1947.
Mortimer, Penelope. Long Distance. Allen Lane, 1974.
Mortimer, Penelope. My Friend Says It’s Bullet-proof. Hutchinson, 1967.
Mortimer, Penelope. My Friend Says It’s Bullet-proof. Virago, 1989.
Mortimer, Penelope. Queen Elizabeth: A Life of the Queen Mother. Viking, 1986.
Mortimer, Penelope. Saturday Lunch with the Brownings. Hutchinson, 1960.
Mortimer, Penelope. The Bright Prison. Michael Joseph, 1956.
Mortimer, Penelope. The Handyman. Allen Lane, 1983.
Mortimer, Penelope. The Home. Hutchinson, 1971.
Mortimer, Penelope. The Pumpkin Eater. Hutchinson, 1962.
Mortimer, Penelope, and John Clifford Mortimer. With Love and Lizards. Michael Joseph, 1957.