The first story which EB
completed was Breakfast, published in her first collection. She had not yet read the most respected short stories of recent years; her biographer Victoria Glendinning
says she was very...
Textual Production
Violet Trefusis
On 14 May 1918, four days after the end of her first romantic holiday with VT
, Vita Sackville-West
began writing her novel Challenge (titled Rebellion in its early stages). It is clearly based on...
Textual Features
Violet Trefusis
The novel's action is set in Oxford.
Trefusis, Violet, and Victoria Glendinning. Broderie Anglaise. Translator Bray, Barbara, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.
12, 22
There, Alexa meets Anne and quarrels with John over the truth of John and Anne's love affair and failed elopement. Alexa and John are reconciled...
Textual Features
Rebecca West
This novel revolves around four meetings (spread over several years) between pianist Harriet Hume and politician Arnold Condorex, characters who come to represent opposing forces—art and politics, private and public life, femininity and masculinity.
Glendinning, Victoria, and Rebecca West. “Introduction”. Harriet Hume, Lester and Orpen Dennys.
2, 6
Textual Features
Edna O'Brien
Three of the stories in this collection, Clara, A Woman at the Seaside, and Mrs. Reinhardt, use sleepwalking as a metaphor for their heroines' desire to escape their mundane lives.
The reviewer quoted above, Victoria Glendinning
, saw Shuttle as an uncompromising explorer, digging away in the moist rabbit-hole of the subconscious, but unlikely to carry very many readers with her.
Glendinning, Victoria. “Blood sisters”. Times Literary Supplement, No. 3907, p. 97.
97
Residence
Elizabeth Bowen
After selling Bowen's Court she had lived briefly at Stratford and Oxford.
Glendinning, Victoria. Elizabeth Bowen. Alfred A. Knopf.
270
There is some disagreement as to whether or not she later left Hythe again for London.
Sackville-West
and Woolf
never read VT
's text: it did not appear in English until 1985, with Barbara Bray
's translation and Victoria Glendinning
's introduction.
Souhami, Diana. Mrs. Keppel and Her Daughter. Flamingo.
257
Glendinning, Victoria, and Violet Trefusis. “Introduction”. Broderie Anglaise, translated by. Barbara Bray and Barbara Bray, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.
v, xvi
In a critical essay, Broderie Anglaise...
Literary responses
Margaret Forster
The response of reviewers, including specialists in feminist biography, was enthusiastic. Victoria Glendinning
in the Times welcomed a development she said she had been looking forward to: a biography offering sympathetic comprehension of the inner...
Literary responses
Jane Gardam
This collection won both the David Higham Prize for Fiction and the Winifred Holtby Memorial Prize. It was also a New Fiction Society
choice.
British Council Film and Literature Department, in association with Book Trust. Contemporary Writers in the UK. http://www.contemporarywriters.com.
The TLS review by Victoria Glendinning
found JG
in this collection better at people than at plots, and dealing out more scrutiny and more punishment to women than to men.
Reviewers divided over the question of how convincingly RT
had impersonated her very young male hero. The Guardian reviewer admired the way that readers were led deep . . . into Lewis's consciousness, while some...
Literary responses
Germaine Greer
A female gynaecologist mentioned in the book as uncaring and insensitive successfully sued Greer for damages.
Wallace, Christine. Germaine Greer: Untamed Shrew. Richard Cohen Books.
265-6
The Penguin
paperback which followed the year after publication came garlanded with praise from British feminist writers: Wendy Cope
Literary responses
Fay Weldon
Reviews of the novel were mixed. Reviewers criticised authorial intrusions, question-and-answer dialogue, and role-typing, while praising solid construction, shrewdness, and authenticity. Victoria Glendinning
in the Times Literary Supplementtraced the details about material objects and...
Literary responses
Elizabeth Jane Howard
Victoria Glendinning
wrote in a New Statesman review: Howard writes most confidently and touchingly at very close range, about momentary doubts, unspoken anxieties, fleeting perceptions, intense good moments and equally intense bad ones, all inextricably...
Timeline
No timeline events available.
Texts
Glendinning, Victoria, and Rebecca West. “Afterword”. Cousin Rosamund, Macmillan, 1985, pp. 287-95.
Glendinning, Victoria, and Rebecca West. “Afterword”. Sunflower, Virago, 1986, pp. 268-76.
Glendinning, Victoria. “Blood sisters”. Times Literary Supplement, No. 3907, p. 97.
Trefusis, Violet, and Victoria Glendinning. Broderie Anglaise. Translator Bray, Barbara, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1985.
Glendinning, Victoria. Elizabeth Bowen. Alfred A. Knopf, 1978.
Glendinning, Victoria, and Rebecca West. “Introduction”. Harriet Hume, Lester and Orpen Dennys, 1980.
Glendinning, Victoria, and Violet Trefusis. “Introduction”. Broderie Anglaise, translated by. Barbara Bray and Barbara Bray, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1985.
Glendinning, Victoria. Jonathan Swift. Hutchinson, 1998.
Glendinning, Victoria. Rebecca West. Alfred Knopf, 1987.
Glendinning, Victoria. “Seeds of success”. The Guardian, p. Review 27.
Glendinning, Victoria. “Speranza: A Leaning Tower of Courage”. Genius in the Drawing-Room, edited by Peter Quennell, Weidenfield and Nicolson, 1980, pp. 101-16.
Glendinning, Victoria. “The gender test”. Times Literary Supplement, No. 4470, p. 1339.
Glendinning, Victoria. “The Muswell Hill mob”. Times Literary Supplement, No. 3889, p. 1199.