Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
Pamela Hansford Johnson
-
Standard Name: Johnson, Pamela Hansford
Birth Name: Pamela Hansford Johnson
Pseudonym: Nap Lombard
Married Name: Pamela Hansford Snow
Titled: Baroness Snow
PHJ
had a long and prolific writing career, from before the second world war until late twentieth century. She is remembered primarily as a novelist (with twenty-seven titles),
Hadley, Tessa. “He wants me no more”. London Review of Books, Vol.
38
, No. 2, pp. 29-30.
30
though she also wrote poetry, drama, memoirs, and political and social commentary.
OM
's friends included a number of fellow-writers: William Gerhardi
, Ivy Compton-Burnett
(whom she had first met before the war, at a party given by Rose Macaulay
, and whose work she deeply admired),...
Textual Production
Olivia Manning
New Stories also published Pamela Hansford Johnson
, Dylan Thomas
, and Stephen Spender
. OM
's title, which is challenging in a way that was characteristic for this stage of her career, comes from...
Literary responses
Olivia Manning
Amid a chorus of praise for this novel, Pamela Hansford Johnson
's statement that it was among the ten best novels written by women in the past twenty-five years attracted ridicule for its mathematical approach...
Textual Production
Barbara Pym
In many ways this novel reflects BP
's undergraduate years at Oxford
, featuring characters and episodes based partly on herself, her sister, and her friends or acquaintances. Among these, Henry Harvey
and the future...
Publishing
Barbara Pym
She wrote the first draft, she said later, over breakfast in bed in her flat in 1973-4, a period of serious health problems—first breast cancer and then a stroke—and of her decision to retire from...
Intertextuality and Influence
Muriel Spark
In a private joke, MS
filled Dougal's notes for his ghosted autobiography with clichés like thrilled to his touch,living a lie, etc., every one of which she had found in the published writings of...
Literary responses
Muriel Spark
The London theatre critics were scathing, with only two exceptions (though one of these, Harold Hobson
, carried a lot of weight). Pamela Hansford Johnson
trounced the play on the BBC
's radio programme The...
Textual Production
Mary Stewart
MS
was bored by modern movements like the anti-novel, the sicks and the beats, but felt there was a place for them: they're trying things out, keeping literature alive and moving.
Stewart, Mary. “Mary Stewart”. Counterpoint, edited by Roy Newquist, George Allen & Unwin , pp. 561-7.
561
She thought her...
Literary responses
Noel Streatfeild
Pamela Hansford Johnson
called this at its first appearance NS
's best book to date.
Julia Strachey
and Pamela Hansford Johnson
both slammed A Wreath of Roses.
Beauman, Nicola. The Other Elizabeth Taylor. Persephone Books.
214-15
ET
herself felt that it expanded her range, but that the result was not successful: that she had produced a cold...
Literary responses
Elizabeth Taylor
Reviews of A Game of Hide and Seek included high praise from Marghanita Laski
and Elizabeth Bowen
(some consolation to ET
for her problems with her US publisher), but also carping which she found deeply...
Family and Intimate relationships
Dylan Thomas
His first serious love-affair was with Pamela Hansford Johnson
, like him an aspiring writer. They corresponded for several months before they met and were, as they had expected to be, mutually attracted. They fell...
Textual Production
Dylan Thomas
The publication was part of the prize offered by the Sunday Referee for the author of the best poem it had published that year. The previous year's winner had been Pamela Hansford Johnson
, currently...
Publishing
Anthony Trollope
Angela Thirkell
(an avowed disciple of Trollope) wrote an introduction for an edition of this novel in 1958; so did Pamela Hansford Johnson
for the Norton
edition four years later. A number of women writers...
Textual Production
Dorothy Whipple
DW
's first story written at and about Barton Seagrave, the place to which she and her husband retired, was about a pretty girl she had watched from her window coping lightly with marriage...
Timeline
No timeline events available.
Texts
Johnson, Pamela Hansford. This Bed Thy Centre. Chapman and Hall; Harcourt Brace, 1935.
Johnson, Pamela Hansford. Too Dear for my Possessing. Collins; Carrick and Evans, 1940.