"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.
Ivy Compton-Burnett
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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 | Author name Sort descending | 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... |
| 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... |
| Reception | Barbara Pym | Pym is not one of those women writers whose stock has risen through feminist re-evaluation. Five years after the influential Times Literary Supplement article was published, Penelope Lively
wrote, I am always surprised that the... |
| Occupation | Edith Sitwell | 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... |
| Intertextuality and Influence | Muriel Spark | The story takes place at Geneva in Switzerland (transferred from the Italian scene of the real-llife original), on an estate owned by a Baron Klopstock, among characters of diverse national origins. The protagonist, Lister the... |
| Literary responses | Muriel Spark | Ivy Compton-Burnett
, who always disliked religious sentiment and religious writing, was severe on MS
. She described her early novels as Not at all good. . . . I don't like novels that tell... |
| 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
... |
| Literary responses | Christina Stead | CS
now received her first enthusiastic review from the Times Literary Supplement—and the first to be written by a woman, Marigold Johnson
. Johnson mentioned that [d]istinguished American writers had been extravagant in their... |
| Occupation | Elizabeth Taylor | ET
wrote amusingly of the horror of appearing on a television programme about books, filmed at Birmingham: sitting on spindly chairs under dazzling lights with other participants (Angus Wilson
, whom she liked... |
| Literary responses | Elizabeth Taylor | Julia Strachey
and Pamela Hansford Johnson
both slammed A Wreath of Roses. Beauman, Nicola. The Other Elizabeth Taylor. Persephone Books, 2009. 214-15 |
| 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, 1984. 270 |
| Literary responses | Elizabeth Taylor | This novel too was praised by Ivy Compton-Burnett
. Spurling, Hilary. Secrets of a Woman’s Heart. Hodder and Stoughton, 1984. 284 |
| Textual Production | Elizabeth Taylor | Robert Liddell preserved the letters that ET
wrote him from 1953 onwards. In his book he quotes up to five pages of detailed accounts of visits to Ivy Compton-Burnett
. |
| Reception | Elizabeth Taylor | Although she received some glowing reviews throughout her career from some of the most distinguished of her novelistic peers, ET
has also been damned with faint praise. She has been called both the modern man's... |
Timeline
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Texts
No bibliographical results available.