The year 1974 marks a turning point in AJ
's writing career, beginning a second phase which proved just as significant as the first.. Soon after moving with her family from London to Lyme Regis...
Textual Production
Vernon Lee
The Ballet of the Nations, a satirico-philosophic burlesque,
Bowe, Nicola Gordon. “Constance and Maxwell Armfield: An American Interlude 1915-1922”. The Journal of Decorative and Propaganda Arts, Vol.
14
, pp. 6-27.
15
was commissioned after Constance Smedley
and Maxwell Armfield
invited VL
to speak at one of their Chelsea political meetings held to discuss the causes...
Literary responses
Vernon Lee
Lee's publication was panned in the Times Literary Supplement, but found strong support from Desmond MacCarthy
, writing as Affable Hawk in the New Statesman, and from G. B. Shaw
in the Nation...
Friends, Associates
Gladys Henrietta Schütze
During the Schützes' pacifist years it was only gradually that they began to find some support from like-minded people, like Bertrand Russell
and Ramsay MacDonald
(though GHS
felt the latter was a fair-weather pacifist), and...
Education
Constance Smedley
After this she became a star student
Brockington, Grace. “&A World Fellowship&: The Founding of the International Lyceum Club for Women Artists and Writers”. Lyceum Club.
Smedley, Constance, and Maxwell Armfield. Crusaders. Chatto & Windus.
15
Again her memoirs lovingly enumerate the names of her teachers, fellow-students (divided...
Residence
Constance Smedley
Crucial to the birth of the Players was the fact that CS
began her life with Maxwell Armfield
(who felt that an artist's dedication was well served by retreat from social and urban life) in...
Occupation
Constance Smedley
Back in London they saw at the Little Theatre run by dancing teacher Margaret Morristhe drama of our dreams: voice and movement and picture accurately synthesized.
Smedley, Constance, and Maxwell Armfield. Crusaders. Chatto & Windus.
Her husband, Maxwell Armfield
, outlived her by thirty-one years (to die on 23 January 1972). He later said that his mature style dated from the time of his wife's death. He left many self-portraits...
Publishing
Constance Smedley
Maxwell Armfield
's frontispiece to Commoners' Rights, 1912, shows Chippingdun, the book's fictional version of Minchinhampton. His later illustrations also show the town or its beautiful surroundings. The work is dedicated to...
Publishing
Constance Smedley
Sylvia's Travels, 1911, another children's book, illustrated by her husband
and dedicated to Mimi Clementi
, was Smedley's own favourite.
Smedley, Constance, and Maxwell Armfield. Crusaders. Chatto & Windus.
Smedley, Constance, and Maxwell Armfield. Sylvia’s Travels. J. M. Dent.
prelims
Publishing
Constance Smedley
This began as a series of articles in The Christian Science Monitor while CS
was living with her husband in New York.
Bowe, Nicola Gordon. “Constance and Maxwell Armfield: An American Interlude 1915-1922”. The Journal of Decorative and Propaganda Arts, Vol.
14
, pp. 6-27.
17
The UCLA
copy of the resulting book, digitized and available through...
Literary Setting
Constance Smedley
CS
defined the theme of this novel as the gulf between English and American attitudes to the law. Law, she wrote, was respected in England but seen in the USA as merely a convenience or...
Dedications
Constance Smedley
Stanley Unwin
's wife
read the manuscript and told her husband that he had got to publish the novel for the sake of its ideas. (Unwin was an internationally-minded pacifist.) The firm signed a contract...
Family and Intimate relationships
Constance Smedley
CS
married Maxwell Ashby Armfield
, a painter, book illustrator, and poet, later a theosophist.
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.
under Smedley, under Armfield
Publishing
Constance Smedley
Also in 1934, on 29 March, CS
had written to The Times, with her husband
and six others, to propose that an oak-tree should be planted and conserved in every English sea-port in memory...
Timeline
No timeline events available.
Texts
Smedley, Constance, and Maxwell Armfield. Crusaders. Chatto & Windus, 1912.
Smedley, Constance, and Maxwell Armfield. Sylvia’s Travels. J. M. Dent, 1911.
Smedley, Constance, and Maxwell Armfield. Tales from Timbuktu. Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1923.
Smedley, Constance, and Maxwell Armfield. The Armfields’ Animal-Book. Duckworth & Co., 1922.
Lee, Vernon, and Maxwell Armfield. The Ballet of the Nations. Chatto and Windus, 1915.
Smedley, Constance, and Maxwell Armfield. The Flower Book. Chatto and Windus, 1910.