Elinor Glyn

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Standard Name: Glyn, Elinor
Birth Name: Elinor Sutherland
Nickname: Nellie Sutherland
Married Name: Elinor Glyn
Indexed Name: Mrs Glyn
Self-constructed Name: Madame Glyn
EG , a highly prolific and popular twentieth-century romancenovelist, also wrote comedies of manners, and screenplays (mostly for silent films). The sexual candour of her novels shocked her Edwardian public: she became particularly known for her term It—meaning personal sexual magnetism—and for her novella and silent film of that title. Over the course of her career, she wrote more than forty novels, adapted eight of them for film (all but two silent), as well as three volumes of short stories, three successive volumes on her thoughts and theories about love, and one on her writing process. During World War One, she wrote French propaganda for US journals, and throughout her career she wrote articles on love, fashion, beauty, and etiquette for magazines such as Cosmopolitan. She kept a journal throughout her life, but never published it. Her novels depict female sensuality and, often, illicit love affairs between older, dominant women and younger, impressionable men. Most of her central figures either come from the upper class, or climb the social ladder by marriage or good luck. EG 's writing is drenched in her romantic notion of love, which she saw as overwhelming, uncontrollable, passionate, sensual, selfless, idealistic, and chivalrous. In her fiction lovers often triumph over impossible situations before consummating their love. Her represention of female sensuality is compatible with advising women: Be elusive—always.
qtd. in
Glyn, Anthony. Elinor Glyn. Hutchinson, 1968.
76
Etherington-Smith, Meredith, and Jeremy Pilcher. The "It" Girls. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1986.
240

Connections

Connections Sort descending Author name Excerpt
Education Elma Napier
In spite of the fact that her family did not value literature as much as games, and that her mother had specific ideas about what girls should read, EN devoured every book she could get...
Education Catherine Cookson
As a young adult CC took on her own education. With varying degrees of success she studied grammar, elocution, French, and the violin. She also discovered the public library. Colleagues at work got her to...
Friends, Associates G. B. Stern
GBS gave a dinner-party at Quaglino's restaurant in London for sixty-four people, including a number of the famous (whom in relating this she calls plums), such as Elinor Glyn and Rose Macaulay .
Stern, G. B. . And did he stop and speak to you?. Henry Regnery, 1958.
41-2
Intertextuality and Influence E. M. Hull
She purportedly used the pseudonym E. M. Hullfor fear of disgracing her family.
Melman, Billie. Women and the Popular Imagination in the Twenties. Macmillan, 1988.
90
She wrote her first novel for personal distraction
qtd. in
Beauman, Nicola. A Very Great Profession: The Woman’s Novel 1914-39. Virago, 1983.
189
while her husband was away during the First World War; she...
Intertextuality and Influence Barbara Cartland
As a young woman BC immersed herself in books by Ethel M. Dell , Elinor Glyn , and Berta Ruck , among others. Dell in particular had a lasting impact on her own writing.
Robyns, Gwen. Barbara Cartland. Doubleday, 1985.
58
Intertextuality and Influence Victoria Cross
VC 's Five Nights, 1908, details a love triangle between a male painter, an Inuit woman, and the painter's cousin, an independent Englishwoman. Charlotte Mitchell notes that it made Elinor Glyn 's Six Weeks...
Intertextuality and Influence Ethel M. Dell
Barbara Cartland , according to her biographer Gwen Robyns , developed a taste for the novels of EMD (along with those of Berta Ruck and Elinor Glyn ) as soon as she discovered the public...
Intertextuality and Influence Laura Riding
The volume was, says Elizabeth Friedmann , largely a response to the ideas of Wyndham Lewis .
Friedmann, Elizabeth. A Mannered Grace. Persea Books, 2005.
114
LR sets out to free the poet from the restrictions imposed by the synthetic or collective notion...
Literary responses Barbara Pym
This became BP 's most widely-reviewed text, and received a mixed reception. Robert Liddell was again outraged, calling this a dreadful book which had only been made possible by the betrayal of Pym's friends in...
Literary responses Sheila Kaye-Smith
Critic Rachel Anderson considers that the religous or quasi-religious element in SKS 's characters—their larger-than-life passions and obsessions, their quests and self-lacerations and rebirths—link her work with that of such romance-writers as Florence Barclay ,...
Literary responses Rosamond Lehmann
Reviewers were pleased to see more fiction from Lehmann after nine years, and the book was popular, although not hugely applauded. Those praising it included Edwin Muir . There was much debate over the real-life...
Literary responses Rosita Forbes
E. E. Mavrogordato , who had been reviewing RF since the beginning of her career and not initially with much respect, paid tribute to her now as differentiated from any other lady traveller because she...
Textual Production Barbara Cartland
In later life Cartland made herself the custodian of the romance tradition by re-issuing a long list of her favourites—Ethel M. Dell , Elinor Glyn , E. M. Hull , Berta Ruck , and...

Timeline

1915: Elinor Glyn lost her suit for infringement...

Writing climate item

1915

Elinor Glyn lost her suit for infringement of copyright against the producer of a film parodying her 1907 bestseller Three Weeks.
Craig, Alec. The Banned Books of England and Other Countries. George Allen and Unwin, 1962.
73
Craig, Alec. The Banned Books of England and Other Countries. George Allen and Unwin, 1962.
73
Thomas, Donald. A Long Time Burning: The History of Literary Censorship in England. Frederick A. Praeger, 1969.
270

Texts

Glyn, Elinor. "It" and Other Stories. Duckworth, 1927.
Glyn, Elinor. Beyond the Rocks. Duckworth, 1906.
Glyn, Elinor. Elizabeth Visits America. Duckworth, 1909.
Beaton, Cecil, and Elinor Glyn. “Introduction”. Three Weeks, Duckworth, 1974, p. v - xxvii.
Glyn, Elinor. Romantic Adventure. Nicholson and Watson, 1936.
Glyn, Elinor. Romantic Adventure. E. P. Dutton, 1937.
Glyn, Elinor. The Career of Katherine Bush. Appleton, 1916.
Glyn, Elinor. The Damsel and the Sage. Duckworth, 1903.
Glyn, Elinor. The Elinor Glyn System of Writing. The Author’s Press, 1922, 4 vols.
Glyn, Elinor. The Philosophy of Love. Newnes, 1920.
Glyn, Elinor. The Philosophy of Love. The Author’s Press, 1923.
Glyn, Elinor. The Reason Why. Duckworth, 1911.
Glyn, Elinor. The Reflections of Ambrosine. Duckworth; Harper, 1902.
Glyn, Elinor. The Vicissitudes of Evangeline. Duckworth; Macaulay, 1905.
Glyn, Elinor. The Visits of Elizabeth. Duckworth, 1900.
Glyn, Elinor. Three Weeks. Duckworth, 1907.
Glyn, Elinor, and Cecil Beaton. Three Weeks. Duckworth, 1974.