In the same year that her mother
died, 1928, MK
gave birth to her first child, Julia
, who also became a novelist. Another daughter and a son followed in 1930 and 1935. Kennedy and...
Family and Intimate relationships
Dorothy Whipple
Henry Whipple, who worked as a civil servant in education, was Dorothy's boss at the time. His work took them to conferences here and there, and meetings of the W. E .A.
Whipple, Dorothy. Random Commentary. Michael Joseph, 1966.
84
Nicola Beauman
Family and Intimate relationships
Lady Cynthia Asquith
LCA
's mother, Mary
, Lady Wemyss, was born a Wyndham, a descendent of the writer Félicité, Mme de Genlis
, and of her royal lover Philippe Egalité
, Duc d'Orléans (who was also father...
Family and Intimate relationships
Lady Cynthia Asquith
Having joined the army, Herbert Asquith
had a spell at a training camp on Salisbury Plain before being posted to the Front in France. By August 1916 he was feeling as if he would...
Family and Intimate relationships
Sir J. M. Barrie
Without children of his own, Barrie had a habit of monopolising the children of friends, for whom he invented elaborate games. Among children so situated were Bevil Quiller-Couch
(who was later the fiancé of the...
Family and Intimate relationships
Ann Bridge
At that time the Foreign Office, working in London, was distinct from the Diplomatic Service
, working abroad. It was not until after the First World War that Owen O'Malley became a diplomat overseas. He...
Family and Intimate relationships
Mollie Panter-Downes
MPD
married future businessman Clare Robinson
, whom she had met the year before when he was still an undergraduate.
Nicola Beauman
in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography says Clare Robinson was a businessman...
Literary responses
Mollie Panter-Downes
On the publication of London War NotesNoël Coward
wrote to tell MPD
that her evocation of the city in wartime, nearly thirty years in the past, was so well done that he felt sodden...
Literary responses
E. M. Delafield
Nicola Beauman
judges this one of EMD
's best novels.
Literary responses
Mollie Panter-Downes
MPD
, who disparaged her own powers of invention and ear for dialogue, called this her only novel.
qtd. in
Beauman, Nicola, and Mollie Panter-Downes. “Introduction”. One Fine Day, Virago, 1985, p. vii - xvi.
x
Nicola Beauman
thought it a study in the shifting sands of social class, and a hymn...
Literary responses
E. M. Delafield
Nicola Beauman
judges that EMD
succeeds in speaking to two different kinds of readers here: those who share the heroine's views of marriage and those who recognize the element of satire in them.
qtd. in
Beauman, Nicola, and E. M. Delafield. “Introduction”. The Diary of a Provincial Lady, Rprt ed. , Virago Press, 1984, p. vii - xvii.
Critic Nicola Beauman
sees this as EMD
's most cruelly satirical novel.
Beauman, Nicola, and E. M. Delafield. “Introduction”. The Diary of a Provincial Lady, Rprt ed. , Virago Press, 1984, p. vii - xvii.
xii
Literary responses
Elizabeth Jenkins
The novel was criticised by some for its exclusively upper-middle-class reach—a view which was energetically countered by Rose Macaulay
on a radio programme.
Jenkins, Elizabeth. The View from Downshire Hill. Michael Johnson, 2004.
107
The Times Literary Supplement welcomed with joy a novel where the...
Literary responses
Elizabeth Taylor
At Mrs. Lippincote's set the tone for reception of ET
by attracting very mixed reviews. She treasured praise from L. P. Hartley
, Richard Church
(who was reminded of Woolf
's Mrs Dalloway), and...
Literary responses
Margaret Kennedy
Recent critics, such as Barbara Brothers
and Beauman
, have re-read the novel for its focus on the portrayal of women and their lives in fiction, to find it one of Kennedy's more substantive and...
Timeline
September 1998: Literary historian Nicola Beauman founded...
Women writers item
September 1998
Literary historian Nicola Beauman
founded Persephone Books
, aimed at reprinting in beautiful format forgotten classics by twentieth-century (mostly women) writers.