"Ivy Compton-Burnett" 1957-01-01. Retrieved from https://www.gettyimages.co.uk/detail/news-photo/english-novelist-ivy-compton-burnett-circa-1957-news-photo/944558376.
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Ivy Compton-Burnett
-
Standard Name: Compton-Burnett, Ivy
Birth Name: Ivy Compton-Burnett
ICB
published twenty novels: the first while she was in her twenties, in 1911, but the first one to use her mature and startlingly original style when she was forty, in 1925. From the beginning she was praised by critics (sometimes a chorus, sometimes a few lone voices) but sold less well than she would have liked. She was a paradox: a person shaped by Victorian values and social hierarchies, whose novels—composed largely of razor-sharp dialogue—dismantle those values and hierarchies from within.
Connections
| Connections Sort descending | Author name | Excerpt |
|---|---|---|
| Cultural formation | Barbara Pym | As for marriage, BP
's involvements with men as a student must have been to some extent influenced by social pressure to marry. She felt badly let down when Henry Harvey
decided to wed another... |
| Dedications | Olivia Manning | OM
published the middle volume of her Balkan Trilogy: The Spoilt City, dedicated to Ivy Compton-Burnett
. David, Deirdre. Olivia Manning: A Woman at War. Oxford University Press, 2012. 169n38 British Library Catalogue. |
| Education | Lady Cynthia Asquith | The most important of Cynthia's governesses, Charlotte Jourdain
, arrived on the scene when she was six, after the death of her brother Colin. Her arrival initiated a very important time in Cynthia's childhood, lasting... |
| Family and Intimate relationships | E. M. Delafield | EMD
's mother, Elizabeth Lydia Rosabelle (Bonham) de la Pasture
, was a popular and prolific novelist whose work was admired by writers as far-ranging as Ivy Compton-Burnett
and Evelyn Waugh
. She wrote to... |
| Friends, Associates | Bryher | The flat became a gathering place for friends including the Sitwells (Bryher grew especially close to Edith
and Osbert
), Elizabeth Bowen
, and Ivy Compton-Burnett
. Schaffner, Perdita. “Keeper of the Flame”. H.D., Woman and Poet, edited by Michael King, National Poetry Foundation, 1986, pp. 27 -33. 32 Bryher,. The Days of Mars. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1972. 18 |
| Friends, Associates | Rose Macaulay | RM
met Ivy Compton-Burnett
; they immediately became true and intimate friends, and the friendship lasted for life. Emery, Jane. Rose Macaulay: A Writer’s Life. John Murray, 1991. 220-1 |
| Friends, Associates | Rose Macaulay | RM
also regularly attended the gatherings of the Friday Hampstead Circle
, presided over by Dorothy
and Reeve Brooke
and later by Sylvia
and Robert Lynd
. These gatherings were attended by RM
's friends... |
| Friends, Associates | Cecily Mackworth | Other friendships made now or later included many with distinguished women, like Ivy Compton-Burnett
(whom she found kinder to me than she apparently was to most other people), Mackworth, Cecily. Ends of the World. Carcanet, 1987. 112 |
| Friends, Associates | Elizabeth Taylor | Friends said that ET
was very shy, but cared very much for very few people. Liddell, Robert, and Francis King. Elizabeth and Ivy. Peter Owen, 1986. 44 |
| Friends, Associates | Elizabeth Jane Howard | Her friends during the 1950s included Stephen
and Natasha Spender
, Alec Waugh
, Margaret Lane
, Malcolm Sargent
, and Joyce Grenfell
. She also met Cyril Connolly
, Olivia Manning
, Stevie Smith |
| Friends, Associates | F. Tennyson Jesse | Gordon Place became the centre of an active female literary community, which included Elizabeth Bowen
, Rose Macaulay
, Virginia Woolf
, Ivy Low
(who was also a good friend of Viola Meynell
), Ivy Compton-Burnett |
| Friends, Associates | Olivia Manning | 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),... |
| Friends, Associates | Pamela Hansford Johnson | Friends made in New York included PHJ
's publisher Charles Scribner
, as well as Diana
and Lionel Trillingwhom I loved, but always found a little intimidating. Johnson, Pamela Hansford. Important to Me. Macmillan; Scribner, 1974. 45 |
| Friends, Associates | Anna Kavan | After her relationship with Stuart Edmonds ended, AK
developed a large and close circle of friends who doted on her. Her friends were almost exclusively homosexual men, and she developed a reputation for not getting... |
| Friends, Associates | Barbara Pym | BP
wrote steadily throughout her life, regardless of changes in occupation. One of the benefits of her first publication, Some Tame Gazelle, in 1950 was the introduction of various authors into her personal and... |
Timeline
1826
The Royal Society of Literature
received its charter; it had been founded several years previously.
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.