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
Family and Intimate relationships W. H. Auden
Nicholas Jenkins of Stanford University formerly maintained on his website at http://www.stanford.edu/~njenkins/ a section called W. H. Auden. Family Ghosts, designed to show how Auden's family, despite his claims to ordinariness, sprang from a...
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 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...
Literary responses Stella Benson
It received favourable reviews both in the Dial and in Punch. For Naomi Mitchison (for whom this was the first book by SB that she had read), it was queer to find someone who...
Literary responses Stella Benson
The Nation and Athenæum said that this novel was a little masterpiece.
Benson, Stella. Tobit Transplanted. Macmillan.
363
Naomi Mitchison , who had not yet met SB , was moved when she read this book to send a fan letter:...
Publishing Stella Benson
Among SB 's journalism, her articles published in The Star and the Athenæum were particularly admired by Naomi Mitchison .
Mitchison, Naomi. You May Well Ask: A Memoir 1920-1940. Gollancz.
127-8
Literary responses Stella Benson
Forty-six years after Benson's death, Naomi Mitchison acknowledged that her work had ceased being read, that her fantasy was misunderstood as whimsy. She felt, however, that in 1979 a revival was due.
Mitchison, Naomi. You May Well Ask: A Memoir 1920-1940. Gollancz.
127
It is...
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 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...
politics Barbara Cartland
BC was one of Ronald 's chief supporters in his brief career as a Conservative MP: she joined him on public campaigns, advised him informally on speechwriting and networking, provided him with a deposit of...
Education William Empson
Sent to preparatory school at the age of seven, WE obtained the rest of his education on scholarships, first at Winchester School , where his schoolmates included future academics William Hayter and John Sparrow and...
Occupation William Empson
WE was an enthusiast for Basic English (a simplified form of the language which he favoured not only for exchanges among scientists and others from different language groups, but also as an introduction to the...
Education Antonia Fraser
AF (like the future Naomi Mitchison before her) attended the Dragon School in Oxford (a boys' preparatory school, taking children from about eight to thirteen). In her day it had twenty girls out of a...
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...
Textual Features Bessie Head
She dedicated it to Naomi Mitchison , who loves Botswana.
Eilersen, Gillian Stead. Bessie Head. Wits University Press.
109
Elements in this fiction refract recent developments in BH 's own life: her male protagonist, Makhaya Maseko, owes something to her husband's story and...

Timeline

1 September 1810-24 August 1811: James Hogg, the Ettrick Shepherd, anonymously...

Writing climate item

1 September 1810-24 August 1811

James Hogg , the Ettrick Shepherd, anonymously published his Edinburghjournal, the Spy.

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.
Mitchison, Naomi. You May Well Ask: A Memoir 1920-1940. Gollancz.
168

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.
Mitchison, Naomi. You May Well Ask: A Memoir 1920-1940. Gollancz.
168

1928: Members of the British Federation of University...

Building item

1928

Members of the British Federation of University Women (later known as the British Federation of Women Graduates ) established the Sybil Campbell Libraryfor the study of the expansion of the role of women in recent generations.

By early October 1930: London publisher Gerald Howe issued a composite...

Building item

By early October 1930

London publisher Gerald Howe issued a composite biography entitled Six Women of the World, which had previously made up six volumes in a Representative Women series, 1927-9.

18 July 1936: The Spanish Civil War began between the Republicans...

National or international item

18 July 1936

The Spanish Civil War began between the Republicans (including Communists) and the Fascists led by Francisco Franco .

12 September 1936: Charlotte Haldane edited the first issue...

Building item

12 September 1936

Charlotte Haldane edited the first issue of Woman Today for the Women's Committee for Peace and Democracy .

By May 1937: Mass-Observation, a social research organisation...

Building item

By May 1937

Mass-Observation , a social research organisation devoted to observing the habits, behaviour, and opinions of ordinary people, was launched: Surrealist in inspiration, it became documentary and socially inclusive in aim.

3 September 1939: Britain and France officially declared war...

National or international item

3 September 1939

Britain and France officially declared war on Germany.

6 March 1957: The Gold Coast became the first British colony...

National or international item

6 March 1957

The Gold Coast became the first British colony to achieve independent statehood, under the name of Ghana.

By May 1968: James D. Watson published The Double Helix,...

Building item

By May 1968

James D. Watson published The Double Helix, an account of the discovery of the structure of DNA, the basis of human genetic material; he dedicated it to Naomi Mitchison .

Texts

Mitchison, Naomi. A Life for Africa: The Story of Bram Fischer. Merlin Press, 1973.
Mitchison, Naomi, and William Stubbs. African Heroes. Bodley Head, 1968.
Mitchison, Naomi. All Change Here: Girlhood and Marriage. Bodley Head, 1975.
Mitchison, Naomi. Among You Taking Notes . . . The Wartime Diary of Naomi Mitchison 1939-1945. Editor Sheridan, Dorothy, Gollancz, 1985.
Mitchison, Naomi. Among You Taking Notes . . . The Wartime Diary of Naomi Mitchison 1939-1945. Editor Sheridan, Dorothy, Oxford University Press, 1986.
Mitchison, Naomi, editor. An Outline for Boys and Girls and their Parents. Victor Gollancz, 1932.
Mitchison, Naomi. As It Was: Small Talk . . . / All Change Here. Richard Drew, 1988.
Mitchison, Naomi. Barbarian Stories. Jonathan Cape, 1929.
Lewis, Wyndham, and Naomi Mitchison. Beyond This Limit. Jonathan Cape, 1935.
Mitchison, Naomi. Black Sparta: Greek Stories. Jonathan Cape, 1928.
Mitchison, Naomi. Black Sparta: Greek Stories. Jonathan Cape, 1931.
Mitchison, Naomi. Cleopatra’s People. Heinemann, 1972.
Mitchison, Naomi. Cloud Cuckoo Land. Jonathan Cape, 1925.
Mitchison, Naomi. Cloud Cuckoo Land. Hodder and Stoughton, 1967.
Mitchison, Naomi. Early in Orcadia. Richard Drew, 1987.
Mitchison, Naomi. Five Men and a Swan. Allen and Unwin, 1957.
Mitchison, Naomi. Images of Africa. Canongate, 1980.
Sutcliff, Rosemary, and Naomi Mitchison. “Introduction”. Cloud Cuckoo Land, The Hodder and Stoughton Library of Great Historical Novels, Hodder and Stoughton, 1967.
Sheridan, Dorothy, and Naomi Mitchison. “Introduction”. Among You Taking Notes . . . The Wartime Diary of Naomi Mitchison 1939-1945, Oxford University Press, 1986, pp. 15-24.
Mitchison, Naomi. Lobsters on the Agenda. Gollancz, 1952.
Mitchison, Naomi. Memoirs of a Spacewoman. Victor Gollancz, 1962.
Mitchison, Naomi. Mucking Around: Five Continents Over Fifty Years. Gollancz, 1981.
Mitchison, Naomi. Naomi Mitchison’s Vienna Diary. Victor Gollancz, 1934.
Squier, Susan M., and Naomi Mitchison. “Naomi Mitchison: The Feminist Art of Making Things Difficult”. Solution Three, Feminist Press at The City University of New York, 1995, pp. 161-83.
Mitchison, Naomi. Not By Bread Alone. M. Boyars, 1983.