Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
John Buchan
-
Standard Name: Buchan, John
Birth Name: John Buchan
Pseudonym: H. de V.
Pseudonym: Cadmus
Titled: Baron Tweedsmuir of Elsfield
JB
began writing and publishing before the end of the nineteenth century and continued through the first forty years of the twentieth. His output was large (especially for a man with a busy professional, non-literary career) and varied: poetry, essays, biography, history, travel writing, political writing, and serious fiction. He is best remembered for his thrillers.
She helped W. G. Fay
to write his history of the Abbey Theatre
, Dublin, The Fays of the Abbey Theatre: An Autobiographical Record (1935), which emphasises the actors and those who managed the...
Family and Intimate relationships
Susan Tweedsmuir
In 1935 the pattern of ST
's life changed when her husband
was created Baron Tweedsmuir and appointed Governor-General of Canada. From now on she was Lady Tweedsmuir, and for the next five years she...
Family and Intimate relationships
Susan Tweedsmuir
ST
's Canadian years came to an abrupt end with her husband
's death of a cerebral thrombosis on 11 February 1940, not long after the outbreak of the Second World War.
Friends, Associates
Alison Uttley
By the time AU
's mentor, Professor Alexander,
died (deeply upset about Hitler's rule in Germany), she had met another father-figure and important friend, the poet Walter de la Mare
. She also developed friendships...
Friends, Associates
Mary Webb
MW
was a friend of critic Adrian Bury
and was close to Welsh writer and critic Caradoc Evans
, who met her in London and in whom she confided her hopes and fears.
Susan Tweedsmuir
later wrote that Gone to Earth had opened a new door to me,
Tweedsmuir, Susan. A Winter Bouquet. G. Duckworth, 1954.
110
while her husband, John Buchan
, wrote of one passage: If this is not magic I do not know...
Literary responses
Elspeth Huxley
British Book News considered that EH
had drawn to good effect on an intimate knowledge of African landscape, politics, and race issues and displayed great narrative skill, though a little lacking in psychological subtlety.
British Book News. British Council.
(1957): 451
Material Conditions of Writing
Susan Tweedsmuir
ST
's first publication after her husband
's death and her return to England was Canada, one of The British Commonwealth in Pictures series, a slim volume covering history and geography.
Solo: Search Oxford University Libraries Online. 18 July 2011, http://solo.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/primo_library/libweb/action/search.do?vid=OXVU1&fromLogin=true&reset_config=true.
Author summary
Susan Tweedsmuir
ST
, still Susan Buchan and married to a more famous author, John Buchan
, began publishing in collaboration with him. From their joint novel, published just after the First World War, she continued on...
Publishing
Susan Tweedsmuir
Susan Buchan (later ST
) and her husband John Buchan
together privately published a colloquy on world politics
entitled The Island of Sheep, using the pseudonyms Cadmus and Harmonia.
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.
under John Buchan
Solo: Search Oxford University Libraries Online. 18 July 2011, http://solo.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/primo_library/libweb/action/search.do?vid=OXVU1&fromLogin=true&reset_config=true.
Textual Production
Susan Tweedsmuir
Susan Buchan (later ST
) wrote and published a number of one-act plays and adaptations, mostly dating from 1932 or shortly afterwards. These include The Little House, Christmas Time, 'Bromides', A Play...
Textual Production
Susan Tweedsmuir
In July 1946 there appeared ST
's first edited volume of her late husband's work: The Clearing House, a Survey of One Man's Mind: A Selection from the Writings of John Buchan, with a...
Textual Production
Catherine Carswell
Letters exchanged by John Buchan
with CC
and her husband are in the National Library of Scotland
. Her son carefully preserved tin trunks full of her manuscripts and papers, which he sorted through at...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text
Susan Tweedsmuir
The opening proper of this volume invokes with some trepidation George Sand
's statement that there is nothing more tedious than the dregs of an old régime.
Tweedsmuir, Susan. A Winter Bouquet. G. Duckworth, 1954.
20
Again the structure of the book is...
Timeline
1901: The publication of George Douglas Brown's...
Writing climate item
1901
The publication of George Douglas Brown
's novel The House with the Green Shutters marked the first attack on the Scottish school of fiction that was afterwards known as Kailyard.
Campbell, Ian. Kailyard. Ramsay Head, 1981.
7-17
Blake, George. Barrie and the Kailyard School. Arthur Barker, 1951.
9-18
Dickson, Beth. “Annie S. Swan and O. Douglas: Legacies of the Kailyard”. A History of Scottish Women’s Writing, edited by Douglas Gifford et al., Edinburgh University Press, 1997, pp. 329-46.
329, 340
Hart, Francis Russell. The Scottish Novel: From Smollett to Spark. Harvard University Press, 1978.
114
1911: Flemington, a historical novel by Scottish...
Women writers item
1911
Flemington, a historical novel by Scottish poet and fiction-writer Violet Jacob
(1863-1946), drew a long letter of praise from John Buchan
.
Tweedsmuir, Susan. The Lilac and the Rose. G. Duckworth, 1952.
54-6
Texts
Buchan, John. A Book of Escapes and Hurried Journeys. T. Nelson, 1922.
Buchan, John. A History of the Great War. T. Nelson and Sons, 1922, 4 vols.
Buchan, John. Greenmantle. Hodder and Stoughton, 1916.
Buchan, John. Memory Hold-the-Door. Hodder and Stoughton, 1940.
Buchan, John. Mr. Standfast. Hodder and Stoughton, 1919.
