Naomi Mitchison

-
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
politics Virginia Woolf
On 10 May Germany had invaded Holland and Belgium. In the event of an invasion of England, they could indeed expect a terrible personal fate, on account of their anti-war politics, Leonard's anti-war career and...
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...
Textual Production Amabel Williams-Ellis
Contributors included Nancy Cunard , Winifred Holtby , Storm Jameson , Pamela Hansford Johnson , Naomi Mitchison , Sylvia Townsend Warner , W. H. Auden , John Lehmann , and John Strachey .
Publishing Dorothy Whipple
DW must have been writing and publishing stories before her first novel appeared, since she was working on High Wages when her Miss Boddy was printed in Everyman and she recorded it as her first...
politics Sylvia Townsend Warner
Warner and Ackland were members of publisher Victor Gollancz 's Left Book Club , and wrote assiduously for left-wing papers and magazines. (After the second world war, however, Ackland developed divergent and comparatively right-wing views.)...
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
Literary responses Helen Waddell
The book evoked a chorus of praise. Walter de la Mare wrote to Otto Kyllmann: She writes about poetry absolutely unknown to me, in a fashion that is in itself poetry.Kyllmann wrote to HW
Intertextuality and Influence Elizabeth Taylor
As a child Betty Coles (later ET ) wrote plays (with very short scenes each demanding a new and elaborate setting) and stories. She said she always wanted to be a novelist.
Leclercq, Florence. Elizabeth Taylor. Twayne.
2
At twelve...
Literary responses Rosemary Sutcliff
The publishers had many laudatory quotes to use in their advertising for this book, including some from other historical novelists: Mary Renault and Naomi Mitchison . David Holloway praised it in the Daily Telegraph as...
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
Textual Production Stevie Smith
Even after her first volume of poetry appeared, SS had trouble finding outlets. In 1938 she sent Naomi Mitchison a poem entitled Goodnight (beginning Miriam and Horlick spend a great deal of time putting off...
Literary responses Stevie Smith
Looking back in 1979, Mitchison expressed the hope that those who turned SS down when she needed their help had felt really badly about it after she became known in the 1950s.
Mitchison, Naomi. You May Well Ask: A Memoir 1920-1940. Gollancz.
158
Literary responses Stevie Smith
Novel on Yellow Paper was an immediate critical success. Appreciation expressed in reviews by Naomi Mitchison and Rosamond Lehmann laid the foundations for SS 's friendships with these and other writers.
Spalding, Frances. Stevie Smith: A Critical Biography. Faber and Faber.
125
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.
A poet, Robert Nichols
Literary responses Stevie Smith
Naomi Mitchison praised this collection in a review for Time and Tide from which a friendship developed.
Mitchison, Naomi. You May Well Ask: A Memoir 1920-1940. Gollancz.
153-4
Looking back in 1979 Mitchison characterised Smith's style as witty, full of meaning, one-off from a packed...
Leisure and Society Evelyn Sharp
Apart from travelling and hiking together and discussing their respective writing, the couple had in common their pleasure in folk dancing. They were both members of the English Folk Dance Society , founded by Evelyn's...

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.