Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
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.
It was well attended by women writers. Ivy Compton-Burnett
and Bryher
were there, and H. D.
and Vita Sackville-West
were among the other readers on the evening's programme. Dorothy Wellesley
was to have read also...
Occupation
Muriel Spark
She later implied that she got this job on the strength of sharing her enthusiasm for Ivy Compton-Burnett
with a woman at the local Employment Bureau
. She described the work as wonderfully interesting. I...
Occupation
Freya Stark
FS
expressed a strong admiration for Jourdain and her intellectual accomplishments: in letters to her mother, she outlined plans for a writing career on the model of Jourdain's. Stark met Jourdain's partner, Ivy Compton-Burnett
...
GG
also worked as director for two different London publishing houses: for Eyre and Spottiswoode
from 1944 (when he resigned from the secret service) to 1948 and for Bodley Head
for ten years beginning in...
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
Ivy Compton-Burnett
wrote to her friend ET
of her great and lasting pleasure in this novel.
Spurling, Hilary. Secrets of a Woman’s Heart. Hodder and Stoughton.
270
The Book Marketing Council
included it on its list of Best Novels of Our Time. Nevertheless most...
Literary responses
Olivia Manning
This book evoked a double-edged response from Ivy Compton-Burnett
who, writing to Elizabeth Taylor
, said: It really is full of very good descriptions. Quite excellent descriptions. I don't know if you care for descriptions...
Literary responses
Elizabeth Taylor
This novel too was praised by Ivy Compton-Burnett
.
Spurling, Hilary. Secrets of a Woman’s Heart. Hodder and Stoughton.
284
Kingsley Amis
, in a retrospective essay on ET
's career, noticed her ability to combine an often withering disgust for hypocrisy and self-delusion with...
Literary responses
Pamela Hansford Johnson
In a letter Compton-Burnett
reported herself grateful . . . in a way to her critic (whose name she got wrong) but felt she had made errors which needed to be pointed out. Damningly she...
Literary responses
Dorothy Whipple
DW
was an unacknowledged favourite of Ivy Compton-Burnett
and evidently of Elizabeth Taylor
too, since Taylor borrowed for her novel Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont from the opening of a story among Whipple's papers, which...
Literary responses
Virginia Woolf
Novelist Angus Wilson
, in the course of an otherwise notably fair and sensitive review for The Observer, said that VW
's her reputation had been overestimated.
Spurling, Hilary. Secrets of a Woman’s Heart. Hodder and Stoughton.
220
On this Ivy Compton-Burnett
commented: Ugly...
Literary responses
Charlotte Yonge
The Daisy Chain's popularity was long-lasting, though not so intense as that of The Heir of Redclyffe. Jane Austen
's nephew James Austen-Leigh
compared it to the work of Austen and Scott
...
Literary responses
Vera Brittain
The book was widely and favourably reviewed. Lady Rhondda
found it [e]xtraordinarily interesting. I sat up reading it till long past my usual bedtime and have been reading it again all this morning.
Gorham, Deborah. Vera Brittain: A Feminist Life. Blackwell.
This novel was widely praised when it appeared. The Daily Mail reviewer, however, dismissed it as the typically inferior product of a lady writer, comparing it to its disadvantage with Dolores, first (and now...
