Angela Thirkell

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Standard Name: Thirkell, Angela
Birth Name: Angela Margaret Mackail
Pseudonym: Leslie Parker
Married Name: Angela Margaret McInnes
Married Name: Angela Margaret Thirkell
Married Name: Mrs G. L. Thirkell
AT , having already published journalism (some of it literary) and a family memoir, launched her career as a novelist in the 1930s (her own early forties) and continued publishing for nearly thirty years at the rate of a title a year or more. Among her novels the best-known are those of the long Barsetshire series: stories of English village life where characters are effortlessly eccentric, and issues of class, nationality, gender, and sexual preference are presented with a characteristic blend of naiveté, obliquity, and straight-faced humour. She also published a children's book, a historical biography, and introductions to reprints of other authors' novels.
Photograph of a drawing of Angela Thirkell, drawn in black and white. She is depicted from the shoulders up, wearing a simple dress with ruffled sleeves, and her dark hair is pulled back. There is a signature and a date in the bottom right-hand corner. The signature is not clearly visible but the date appears to be 1918.

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
Textual Features Sue Townsend
Adrian Mole carried the genes of the British talent for humour, as formerly represented by Stella Gibbons and Angela Thirkell , but in a newly anarchic and ungenteel form. Like Richmal Crompton in the William...
Textual Production Penelope Fitzgerald
She brought to this work her own experience as an amateur artist, and shows great skill in the delineation of character: of William Morris as well as of Burne-Jones and his wife Georgiana (who were...
Textual Production Storm Jameson
Jameson had been approached by the Ministry of Information once the USA had entered World War II, for suggestions on how to cement Anglo-American relations.
Jameson, Storm. Journey from the North. Harper and Row, 1970.
524
The resulting volume includes work by Phyllis Bentley ,...
Textual Production Elizabeth Jenkins
EJ contributed an introduction to a volume, the seventh in John Lehmann 's The Chiltern Library, published in 1947 and containing two titles by Elizabeth Gaskell . In her introduction to Thackeray 's Vanity...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text Diana Athill
Part two, introduced by some comment on the nature of the relationship between writer and publisher, provides sketches and stories of many of the authors whom DA worked with. Though she does not belabour the...

Timeline

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Texts

Thirkell, Angela. Trooper to the Southern Cross. Virago, 1985.
Thirkell, Angela. Wild Strawberries. Hamish Hamilton, 1934.