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...
Family and Intimate relationships
Margaret Kennedy
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
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...
Literary responses
Elizabeth Taylor
In connection with this story and with At Mrs. Lippincote's, Nicola Beauman
called her one of the great writers about childhood.
Beauman, Nicola. A Very Great Profession: The Woman’s Novel 1914-39. Virago, 1983.
7
qtd. in
Jones, Amanda Jane. “The Sad Strangeness of Separation: Enuresis and Separation Anxiety in Women’s Wartime Fiction”. Women’s History, Vol.
2
, No. 4, 1 Mar.–31 May 2016, pp. 24-8.
26
Literary responses
Elizabeth Taylor
Nicola Beauman
has called these some of the most remarkable letters of the twentieth century.
Beauman, Nicola. The Other Elizabeth Taylor. Persephone Books, 2009.
xv
John O'Connell
has found them astonishing in their candour and lucidity.
O’Connell, John. “’I have not got a bikini’”. The Guardian, 20 June 2009, p. Review 9.
Roger Fulford
, reviewing it for the Times Literary Supplement, situated it among a crowd of works looking back from difficult times to an easier and...
Literary responses
Naomi Royde-Smith
The TLS praised NRS
's skill in the management of a gripping story.
Nicola Beauman
in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography mentioned among NRS
's most admired later novels...
Literary responses
Mollie Panter-Downes
This novel was much less well received than MPD
's first. Critic Nicola Beauman
finds it remarkable for the fact that the protagonist acquires a social conscience after coming into money, and for the lyrical...
Literary responses
Ann Bridge
A British Foreign Office
official warned that what he called the uniform unpleasantness of the Spanish characters (which was news to her: was he responding to the fact that people behave badly in extreme circumstances?)...
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.