Naomi Mitchison

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Standard Name: Mitchison, Naomi
Birth Name: Naomi Mary Margaret Haldane
Nickname: Nou
Nickname: Me
Married Name: Naomi Mary Margaret Mitchison
Titled: Lady Naomi Mary Margaret Mitchison
During her life of over a century (she narrowly missed living from the nineteenth into the twenty-first) NM averaged almost a book a year. She published novels, short stories, diaries, poetry, travel books, essays, and writing for children, all of them informed with the same vivid interest in the world around her and burning desire for its social betterment.
Black-and-white portrait of Naomi Mitchison. Her hair is pinned at the sides of her head in two buns and she is wearing a fuzzy sweater with two pom poms at the collar.

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
Friends, Associates Stella Benson
SB met many writers during this stay in England. Her old friend Margery Spring Rice brought her together with Naomi Mitchison , who had recently approached her by letter.
Mitchison, Naomi. You May Well Ask: A Memoir 1920-1940. Gollancz.
127-9
Friends, Associates Storm Jameson
Jameson met Romer Wilson , Charles Morgan , and J. W. N. Sullivan through her Knopf connections. By about 1924 she and Edith Sitwell had visited each other's homes. Jameson felt that in spite of...
Friends, Associates Stella Benson
This summer she spent a holiday at Varengeville in Normandy, with Naomi Mitchison . She also met Sydney Schiff (at Chesham in Buckinghamshire), and on 31 August 1925 had her first meeting with...
Friends, Associates Elizabeth Jenkins
EJ was mildly satirical about the left-wing and anti-monarchical tendencies of Naomi Mitchison (a well-known author of the times)
Jenkins, Elizabeth. The View from Downshire Hill. Michael Johnson.
105
and the allegedly somewhat self-important Vera Brittain (who, felt Jenkins, had let the...
Friends, Associates Stevie Smith
SS developed lasting friendships with Naomi Mitchison and Rosamond Lehmann , both of whom reviewed her work. She was also close to US poet Naomi Replansky , with whom she corresponded before they met in 1969.
Smith, Stevie. Me Again. Editors Barbera, Jack and William McBrien, Vintage.
298-9
Friends, Associates Phyllis Bentley
At a dinner party at Vera Brittain 's Chelsea house, PB met Naomi Mitchison , Cecil Roberts , and Ellen Wilkinson .
Brittain, Vera. Chronicle of Friendship. Editor Bishop, Alan, Gollancz.
39-40
Friends, Associates Doris Lessing
At this time Lessing's friends included a number of writers: Ruth Fainlight and Alan Sillitoe , Arnold Wesker and his wife Dusty, Naomi Mitchison , Ted Hughes , and R. D. Laing .
Diski, Jenny. “Doris and Me”. London Review of Books, Vol.
37
, No. 1, pp. 21-3.
21
Friends, Associates Ann Bridge
AB 's correspondents included Ka Arnold-Foster , John Betjeman , E. M. Forster , Margaret Haig Rhondda , Margaret Irwin , John Masefield , Naomi Mitchison , I. A. Richards , Vita Sackville-West , and...
Friends, Associates Doris Lessing
Her old friends included Naomi Mitchison (who shared her love of Africa), the composer Philip Glass , and her biographer and executor Michael Holroyd .
Murphy, Kim. “Lessing will have the last word”. Edmonton Journal, p. D3.
D3
Kennedy, Maev. “Doris Lessing dies aged 94”. theguardian.com.
Sage, Lorna. “Doris Lessing obituary”. theguardian.com.
Friends, Associates Helen Waddell
Friends from HW 's time at Somerville included Maude Clarke , whom she had known as a child and whose Oxford position had been one of the incentives to go there, and archaelogist Helen Lorimer
Friends, Associates Ethel Mannin
EM entertained frequently at Oak Cottage, the house she bought after separating from her first husband. Visitors included Paul Tanqueray , Louis Marlow , Ralph Straus , Norman Haire , Fenner Brockway , and...
Friends, Associates Bessie Head
In Francistown she again was able to draw on the generosity of friends who perceived her literary potential: Nini Ettlinger , who gave her, under the appearance of a loan, the money to buy a...
Friends, Associates Amabel Williams-Ellis
Shortly before coming out into society, Amabel and her family were invited to visit the Haldane family in Scotland. Here, she began a friendship with future scientist J. B. S. Haldane to the envy...
Friends, Associates Winifred Holtby
Through her work with the Six Point Group and Time and Tide, WH met the founder of both, Margaret Haig, Lady Rhondda . Their professional relationship grew into a friendship, and WH dedicated her...
Fictionalization Sappho
In the twentieth century Sappho continued full of potential for poets and prose-writers. Naomi Mitchison fictionalises her supposed school; Eavan Boland takes her as guide on an underworld journey (as Dante took Virgil); Jeanette Winterson

Timeline

No timeline events available.

Texts

Mitchison, Naomi. What do you think yourself? Scottish short stories. Paul Harris, 1982.
Mitchison, Naomi. When the Bough Breaks, and Other Stories. Cape, 1924.
Mitchison, Naomi. You May Well Ask: A Memoir 1920-1940. Gollancz, 1979.