Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
Elinor Glyn
-
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.
"Elinor Glyn" Retrieved from https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/70/Elinor_Glyn%2C_portrait_bust_LCCN2014680673.jpg/745px-Elinor_Glyn%2C_portrait_bust_LCCN2014680673.jpg.
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
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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.