Marghanita Laski

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Standard Name: Laski, Marghanita
Birth Name: Esther Pearl Laski
Nickname: Marghanita
Married Name: Esther Pearl Howard
Pseudonym: Sarah Russell
ML , a cultural force in twentieth-century Britain, published six novels, four biographies (one on multiple subjects), an anti-nuclear play, a collection of children's stories, three quasi-scientific investigations into secular and religious experiences, and various short stories, including a ghost story and an anti-nuclear fiction. She also edited various collections: poetry, children's stories, and essays on Charlotte Yonge . Her articles and book reviews appeared in the Times, the Times Literary Supplement, and elsewhere. She also wrote three film scripts, co-authored a television series, and made a substantial contribution of quotations for the Oxford English Dictionary. ML 's novels address class issues and gender barriers, often satirically. They reflect the political, social, and economic anxieties and tensions felt in England during the Second World War and the Cold War. A self-professed atheist, ML wrote secular studies of ecstatic experiences.

Connections

Connections Sort descending Author name Excerpt
Cultural formation Frances Hodgson Burnett
Religion seems not to have been of any great importance to her during her early life. She once attended a seance, and found a lot of idiotic blatant humbug going on & some very nice...
Friends, Associates Margaret Kennedy
Other women writers with whom MK established friendships included Lettice Cooper , Phyllis Bentley (who had also been at Cheltenham ), Marghanita Laski , Elizabeth Jenkins , and Rose Macaulay . These authors supported and...
Friends, Associates Betty Miller
BM 's friends included Olivia Manning , Rosamond Lehmann , Stevie Smith , Inez Holden , Viola Meynell , and Eleanor Farjeon .
Miller, Sarah, and Betty Miller. “Introduction”. On the Side of the Angels, Virago, 1985, p. vii - xviii.
xv
In wartime she met and immediately took to Adrian Stephen ,...
Literary responses Patricia Highsmith
Marghanita Laski , reviewing for the Listener, felt confirmed in her dislike for PH 's work by detecting a strong flavour of being motivated less by pity for animals than by distaste for men.
qtd. in
Wilson, Andrew Norman. Beautiful Shadow: A Life of Patricia Highsmith. Bloomsbury, 2003.
331
Literary responses Frances Hodgson Burnett
When this now-famous book first appeared, reviewers welcomed it, but without any sense of how special it would prove to be.
Gerzina, Gretchen. Frances Hodgson Burnett. Chatto and Windus, 2004.
265
Marghanita Laski in 1950 judged this to be as much better than A...
Literary responses Frances Hodgson Burnett
Marghanita Laski called this a somewhat fanciful account of her childhood.
Laski, Marghanita. Mrs. Ewing, Mrs. Molesworth, and Mrs. Hodgson Burnett. A. Barker, 1950.
7
Literary responses Frances Hodgson Burnett
This book is said to have been particularly appreciated by later novelists Nancy Mitford and Marghanita Laski . The early twenty-first-century reprint was very well reviewed, and was likened to the work of Edith Wharton .
Persephone Books. http://www.persephonebooks.co.uk/.
Literary responses Margaret Kennedy
Friend and fellow author Marghanita Laski praised the novel, and specifically MK 's depiction of Oxford life through the flashbacks that Lucy and her best friend, Melissa, have on their university days. The novel was...
Literary responses Frances Hodgson Burnett
FHB was a focus of media attention—occasionally hostile but often flattering—throughout her career. The title of Marie A. Belloc 's interview Mrs. Hodgson Burnett. A Famous Authoress at Home (in the Idler, 9, 1896)...
Literary responses Ivy Compton-Burnett
Elizabeth Taylor detailed the interest that attended this book's appearance. Published on a Monday, it was broadcast as a radio play on Wednesday, discussed on radio on Thursday by Daniel George (who called the author...
Literary responses Emily Eden
Marghanita Laski , who acknowledged the enjoyment purveyed by EE 's relish of polished cynicism, also felt she could be enjoyed only so long as Jane Austen is quite forgotten.
qtd. in
Nineteenth-Century Literature Criticism. Gale Research, 1981–2024, Numerous volumes.
110
EE 's Indian writings...
Literary responses Rosamond Lehmann
Virago paid a five-hundred-pound advance for each book in addition to royalties. Their first two RL titles each sold almost 20,000 copies within three years. It made her feel very peculiar to receive fan letters...
Literary responses Mary Wesley
Early praise for MW 's work came from such different writers as Marghanita Laski and Susan Hill . Other commentators likened her work to that of Rose Macaulay , Elizabeth Bowen , Barbara Pym ...
Literary responses Elizabeth Taylor
Reviews of A Game of Hide and Seek included high praise from Marghanita Laski and Elizabeth Bowen (some consolation to ET for her problems with her US publisher), but also carping which she found deeply...
Literary responses Vita Sackville-West
British Book News took occasion to remark that VSW possessed an alert if somewhat superficial command of character.
British Book News. British Council.
(1953): 204
The Times Literary Supplement praised the book, but Marghanita Laski in The Observer was extremely cutting.
Glendinning, Victoria. Vita. Penguin, 1984.
375-6

Timeline

6 June 1928: On this Derby Day, a magnificently self-congratulatory...

Writing climate item

6 June 1928

On this Derby Day, a magnificently self-congratulatory dinner
Holford-Strevens, Leofranc. “They got egg on their faces”. London Review of Books, 20 Nov. 2003, pp. 29-30.
29
for a hundred and fifty distinguished people, all male, was held at Goldsmiths' Hall in London to celebrate the completion of the Oxford English Dictionary.
Winchester, Simon. The Meaning of Everything. Oxford University Press, 2003.
xv, xix-xxi

Texts

Laski, Marghanita, and Georgina Battiscombe, editors. A Chaplet for Charlotte Yonge. Cresset Press, 1965.
Laski, Marghanita, and Anton. Apologies. Harvill Press, 1955.
Laski, Marghanita. Ecstasy: A Study of Some Secular and Religious Experiences. Cresset Press, 1961.
Laski, Marghanita. Everyday Ecstasy. Thames and Hudson, 1980.
Laski, Marghanita. From Palm to Pine: Rudyard Kipling Abroad and at Home. Facts on File, 1987.
Ewing, Juliana Horatia et al. “Introduction”. Victorian Tales for Girls, edited by Marghanita Laski, Pilot Press, 1947, pp. 7-12.
Laski, Marghanita. Little Boy Lost. Cresset Press.
Laski, Marghanita, and W. Stein. Love on the Supertax. Cresset Press.
Laski, Marghanita. Mrs. Ewing, Mrs. Molesworth, and Mrs. Hodgson Burnett. A. Barker, 1950.
Laski, Marghanita. “Revising OED”. Times Literary Supplement, No. 3684, p. 1226.
Laski, Marghanita. “The appeal of Georgette Heyer”. Times, p. 16.
Laski, Marghanita. “The Living Language: Ten Random Questions”. Times Literary Supplement, No. 3277, p. 1146.
Laski, Marghanita. The Offshore Island. Cresset Press, 1959.
Laski, Marghanita. The Secular Responsibility. South Place Ethical Society, 1967.
Laski, Marghanita. “The Tower”. The Third Ghost Book, edited by Lady Cynthia Asquith, James Barrie, 1955, pp. 127-34.
Laski, Marghanita. “The Tower”. The Oxford Book of Twentieth-Century Ghost Stories, edited by Michael Cox, Oxford University Press, 1996, pp. 210-16.
Laski, Marghanita. The Victorian Chaise-Longue. Cresset Press, 1953.
Laski, Marghanita. The Village. Cresset Press, 1952.
Laski, Marghanita. “To the Editor: ’George Eliot and Her World’”. Times Literary Supplement, No. 3725, p. 869.
Laski, Marghanita. Toasted English. Houghton Mifflin, 1949.
Laski, Marghanita. Tory Heaven. Cresset Press, 1948.
Ewing, Juliana Horatia et al. Victorian Tales for Girls. Editor Laski, Marghanita, Pilot Press, 1947.
Laski, Marghanita. “Viewpoint”. Times Literary Supplement, No. 3743, p. 1474.