This novel consists of three sections. The opening one, The Duchess and the Smugs, was rejected by a long list of American magazines under its first title, The Moon, the Duchess and the Other...
Friends, Associates
Dodie Smith
In America, DS
developed close and enduring friendships with the writers John Van Druten
and Christopher Isherwood
. Isherwood dedicated his novel The World in the Evening to her.
Grove, Valerie. Dear Dodie: The Life of Dodie Smith. Chatto and Windus, 1996.
Frankau, Pamela. I Find Four People. I. Nicholson and Watson, 1935.
133-4
Later came John Van Druten
Friends, Associates
Rebecca West
Over her lifetime, RW
made countless friends. These included US journalist Dorothy Thompson
(whose long-lasting friendship with her is treated in Susan Hertog
's double biography Dangerous Ambition. Rebecca West and Dorothy Thompson: New Women...
In the early twentieth century she held near-canonical status. Playwright John Van Druten
, who was just a century younger than JWC
, later recalled being deeply struck as a twelve-year-old boy by her account...
Literary responses
G. B. Stern
John Van Druten
apparently found this character exasperating.
Stern, G. B. Trumpet Voluntary. Cassell, 1944.
323
Reception
Rebecca West
The novel was well received in Britain and America, and established West's reputation as a fiction writer.
Rollyson, Carl. Rebecca West: A Saga of the Century. Hodder and Stoughton, 1995.
51
In 1928 it was adapted for the stage by John Van Druten
, and years later, in...
Residence
Pamela Frankau
PF
lived for ten years in the USA: both in California and in Cambridge, Massachusetts. John Van Druten
later paid her to anglicise his play Bell, Book and Candle, adapting it from the...
Timeline
No timeline events available.
Texts
Stern, G. B., and John Van Druten. The Rakonitz Chronicles. Chapman and Hall, 1932.
Van Druten, John. The Widening Circle. Heinemann, 1957.