E. M. Delafield

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Standard Name: Delafield, E. M.
Birth Name: Edmée Elizabeth Monica de la Pasture
Married Name: Edmée Elizabeth Monica Dashwood
Pseudonym: E. M. Delafield
Pseudonym: E. M. D.
Pseudonym: Sportswoman
Used Form: Edmee Elizabeth Monica de la Pasture
Used Form: Edmee Elizabeth Monica Dashwood
EMD 's charming, witty novels are characterized by acute observation and good-humoured social satire. Her stories often draw from her own experiences—as an Edwardian débutante, a novice in a religious order, a war worker, and an upper-middle-class wife and mother in a modernizing Georgian world. At her best (as in Diary of a Provincial Lady) she offers lively, amusing insights into the foibles of her own class and contemporary society at large. Often compared to Jane Austen , she has been praised for her almost uncanny gift for converting the small and familiar dullnesses of everyday life into laughter.
Beauman, Nicola, and E. M. Delafield. “Introduction”. The Diary of a Provincial Lady, Rprt ed. , Virago Press, 1984, p. vii - xvii.
xvii
She also wrote plays, short stories, literary criticism, sketches, war propaganda, and a travel book.
Black-and-white portrait of E.M. Delafield, wearing a cloche hat that gathers at one side with what looks like animal fur and an arrow brooch in the centre, 1922.

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
death Elizabeth De la Pasture
EDP died at nearly eighty, having outlived her second husband by four years and her famous daughter by two.
Waugh, Auberon et al. “Introduction”. The Unlucky Family, Folio Society, 1980, p. vii - xii.
vii
Education Charlotte Yonge
The young CY seems to have been totally unlike her adult self: a noisy, excitable child with a great capacity for screaming.
qtd. in
Battiscombe, Georgina, and E. M. Delafield. Charlotte Mary Yonge: The Story of an Uneventful Life. Constable and Company, 1943.
43
Her parents followed the system of Richard and Maria Edgeworth for bringing...
Family and Intimate relationships Elizabeth De la Pasture
EDP had two daughters from her first marriage. The elder, Edmée Elizabeth Monica De la Pasture (born on 9 June 1890), became the novelist E. M. Delafield —who, however, found her mother cold and distant...
Friends, Associates Catharine Amy Dawson Scott
Neighbours and guests of CADS in Cornwall included J. D. Beresford , Dorothy Richardson , and E. M. Delafield . Noël Coward came for a miserable weekend, when he was ostracized by the family because...
Friends, Associates Marie Belloc Lowndes
Apart from MBL 's established literary friends, there were many whose early writing she encouraged to particularly good effect: Graham Greene , Margaret Kennedy , Pamela Frankau , E. M. Delafield , and L. P. Hartley .
Iddesleigh, Elizabeth Northcote, Countess of et al. “List of Books by Mrs Belloc Lowndes, Foreword”. Diaries and Letters of Marie Belloc Lowndes, 1911-1947, edited by Susan Lowndes Marques and Susan Lowndes Marques, Chatto and Windus, 1971, pp. prelims, 1 - 3.
2
Friends, Associates Kate O'Brien
During her time at Oxford, KOB developed friendships with the Irishwoman Enid Starkie (a French scholar of note and later the holder of the Légion d'Honneur) and the English novelist E. M. Delafield . The...
Intertextuality and Influence E. Arnot Robertson
Again the sexual content was an issue. Devlin finds both reticence and modesty in EAR , but critics found the book's sexual candour appalling, or called it crude or [r]ather too full blooded, or...
Literary responses Storm Jameson
The appearance of Europe to Let struck a blow at SJ 's in any case faltering friendship with Vera Brittain . They quarrelled over the character Olga (Johnson) Stehlík in The Hour of Prague...
Literary responses Charlotte Yonge
E. M. Delafield writes that during the 1940s CY retained wide popularity: that the London Library 's copies of her books were often checked out by readers, and that when Delafield wrote to the Times...
Occupation Margaret Haig Viscountess Rhondda
Women contributors ranged widely: Rebecca West , Stella Benson , Cicely Hamilton , Members of Parliament Lady Nancy Astor and Ellen Wilkinson , Virginia Woolf , Naomi Mitchison , E. M. Delafield , Rose Macaulay
Performance of text Elizabeth De la Pasture
EDP had many plays successfully staged. Apart from those that were dramatised from novel form, they included The Lonely Millionaires and Grace the Reformer, both 1906, neither of which appear to have been published...
Author summary Elizabeth De la Pasture
EDP had a successful career as a popular playwright (few of whose dramas reached print) and novelist. She also wrote short stories for periodicals, and a single story for children which had great success a...
Reception E. H. Young
Though she has had no academic attention until very recently, EHY appealed to a wide readership. Her works remained steadily in print during her lifetime. Writers of blurbs for her covers included E. M. Delafield
Residence Kate O'Brien
By September 1942, KOB was established in Delafield 's house, Croyle, near Kentisbeare in Devon.
O’Brien, Kate. The Last of Summer. Virago, 1990.
243
She was, says Lorna Reynolds, a paying guest there; however, she was also crucially helpful to Delafield, who...
Textual Features Penelope Fitzgerald
PF 's letters are highly observant of the people around her, often satirically, sometimes lovingly. From long before she became an author, she was using her letters to craft both character and narrative. Rosemary Hill...

Timeline

14 May 1920: Time and Tide began publication, offering...

Building item

14 May 1920

Time and Tide began publication, offering a feminist approach to literature, politics, and the arts: Naomi Mitchison called it the first avowedly feminist literary journal with any class, in some ways ahead of its time...

6-11 December 1922: Edith Thompson and her younger lover Frederick...

Building item

6-11 December 1922

Edith Thompson and her younger lover Frederick Bywaters were tried for the murder of her husband, Percy Thompson .
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.

31 August 1939: The British Government issued an evacuation...

National or international item

31 August 1939

The British Government issued an evacuation notice to be carried out within twenty-four hours; within three days, in fact, a million and a half children, pregnant women, and the blind were moved from their urban...

8 May 2008: Virago Press marked thirty years of Virago...

Women writers item

8 May 2008

Virago Press marked thirty years of Virago Modern Classics by re-issuing works by Barbara Pym , E. M. Delafield , Elizabeth Taylor , Jacqueline Susann , Muriel Spark , Helene Hanff , Zora Neale Hurston , and Angela Carter .
Callil, Carmen. “The stories of our lives”. Guardian Unlimited, 26 Apr. 2008.

Texts

Delafield, E. M. "Faster! Faster!". Macmillan, 1936.
Delafield, E. M. A Reversion to Type. Hutchinson, 1923.
Delafield, E. M. As Others Hear Us. Macmillan, 1937.
Delafield, E. M. Challenge to Clarissa. Macmillan, 1931.
Battiscombe, Georgina, and E. M. Delafield. Charlotte Mary Yonge: The Story of an Uneventful Life. Constable and Company, 1943.
Delafield, E. M. Consequences. Hodder & Stoughton, 1919.
Delafield, E. M., and Arthur Watts. Diary of a Provincial Lady. Macmillan, 1930.
Delafield, E. M. et al. Diary of a Provincial Lady. Harper, 1931.
Delafield, E. M. Gay Life. Macmillan, 1933.
Delafield, E. M. General Impressions. Macmillan, 1933.
Delafield, E. M. Humbug. Hutchinson, 1921.
Delafield, E. M., and Georgina Battiscombe. “Introduction”. Charlotte Mary Yonge: The Story of an Uneventful Life, Constable and Company, 1943, pp. 9-15.
Beauman, Nicola, and E. M. Delafield. “Introduction”. The Diary of a Provincial Lady, Rprt ed. , Virago Press, 1984, p. vii - xvii.
Delafield, E. M. Jill. Hutchinson, 1926.
Delafield, E. M. Ladies and Gentlemen in Victorian Fiction. Hogarth Press, 1937.
Delafield, E. M. Late and Soon. Macmillan, 1943.
Delafield, E. M. Love Has No Resurrection, and Other Stories. Macmillan, 1939.
Delafield, E. M. Messalina of the Suburbs. Hutchinson, 1923.
Delafield, E. M. Mrs. Harter. Hutchinson, 1924.
Delafield, E. M. No One Now Will Know. Macmillan, 1941.
Delafield, E. M. Nothing Is Safe. Macmillan, 1937.
Delafield, E. M. People You Love. Collins, 1940.
Borden, Mary et al. “Preface”. Diary of a Provincial Lady, Harper, 1931, p. ix - xi.
Delafield, E. M. Straw Without Bricks. Macmillan, 1937.
Delafield, E. M. Tension. Hutchinson, 1920.