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.
Black-and-white photo of Marghanita Laski. She is wearing a tassled cap and is draped in striped fabric. Therer is a small gecko brooch on her left that sits between her fingers.

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
Reception 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...
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...
Textual Production Mary Stott
Growing up the daughter of journalist parents, Mary Waddington (later MS ) was a journalist in her play as a small child. She told her dolls, I have some copy to write now.
Blain, Virginia et al., editors. The Feminist Companion to Literature in English: Women Writers from the Middle Ages to the Present. Yale University Press; Batsford.
Her first...
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.
375-6
Literary responses Barbara Pym
The sales of this second novel nearly doubled those of Pym's first: Excellent Women sold 5,477 copies in the two months to June 1952, while Some Tame Gazelle sold only 3,722 in the thirteen years...
Literary responses Barbara Pym
Initial comment included reviews or articles by A. S. Byatt and Marghanita Laski .
Allen, Orphia Jane. Barbara Pym: Writing a Life. Scarecrow Press.
198, 199
Orphia Jane Allen considers this work a thinly developed
Allen, Orphia Jane. Barbara Pym: Writing a Life. Scarecrow Press.
40
but effectively ironic, witty view of academia. Anne Wyatt-Brown
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, p. vii - xviii.
xv
In wartime she met and immediately took to Adrian Stephen ,...
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...
Reception Rudyard Kipling
Though Kipling's popularity during his lifetime and afterwards was immense, his identification with the ideology of Empire has kept him on the fringes of the academic canon. Marghanita Laski 's monograph about him, 1987 (which...
Textual Production Margaret Kennedy
MK 's study of the craft of fiction writing, The Outlaws on Parnassus, was published by Marghanita Laski 's husband, John Howard , of the Cresset Press .
Powell, Violet. The Constant Novelist. W. Heinemann.
199
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...
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...
Textual Production Margaret Kennedy
Other notable women authors also contributed to this series, including three of MK 's writing friends: Lettice Cooper , Elizabeth Jenkins , and Marghanita Laski .
Powell, Violet. The Constant Novelist. W. Heinemann.
178
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.
Wilson, Andrew Norman. Beautiful Shadow: A Life of Patricia Highsmith. Bloomsbury.
331

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, 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.

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.
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 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.