Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
Lady Cynthia Asquith
-
Standard Name: Asquith, Lady Cynthia
Birth Name: Cynthia Mary Evelyn Charteris
Styled: Lady Cynthia Mary Evelyn Charteris
Married Name: Lady Cynthia Mary Evelyn Asquith
Pseudonym: C. Greene
Pseudonym: A Correspondent
Pseudonym: Leonard Gray
Used Form: Cynthia Asquith
LCA
is chiefly remembered as a diarist of the First World War, who gives a unique picture on its impact, both detailed and profound, on the lives of the English governing class. She also published novels, literary biographies, anthologies, journalism, plays, ghost stories, and works for children.
Bagnold's biographer Anne Sebba
writes that try as [EB
] might to belong to the artists' milieu, she could not release her other foot from the smart set.
Sebba, Anne. Enid Bagnold: The Authorized Biography. Weidenfeld and Nicolson.
148
Bagnold's friends included socialist...
Literary responses
Enid Bagnold
EB
's friend Desmond MacCarthy
approached Virginia Woolf
to review the book, but she refused, having taken a dislike to Bagnold and assuming that she had enmeshed poor old Desmond.
Friedman, Lenemaja. Enid Bagnold. Twayne.
9
As Woolf put it...
Textual Features
Enid Bagnold
The Squire, an unnamed upper-class woman, gives birth to her fifth child while her husband is doing business in India. The novel goes into detail about such matters as pregnancy, anaesthetics during childbirth, breastfeeding...
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...
Friends, Associates
Sir J. M. Barrie
Lady Cynthia Asquith
became SJMB
's private secretary after the First World War. She worked for him for years (she needed the money), using the pseudonym C. Greene. They became close to each other.
During the 1940s EB
published stories in the Listener (not for the first time), the New Yorker, Horizon, and the Cornhill, as well as in collections such as Penguin New Writing no...
She opens the novel in 1914 to depict the decadence of pre-war Lyndon, the manor house where Agatha (who represents the Victorian ideal of wifehood) lives. The pre-war luxury of Lyndon serves to set up...
Friends, Associates
Margaret Kennedy
Through her marriage to Davies, Kennedy came into contact with the former Prime Minister Asquith
and his family. Her acquaintance with members of high society gave her considerable material for later fiction.
Powell, Violet. The Constant Novelist. W. Heinemann.
77, 90
She...
Anthologization
Marghanita Laski
ML
's ghost story The Tower, appeared in Cynthia Asquith
's The Third Ghost Book.
Performers included Cynthia Asquith
as St Ursula and Diana Manners
as a thousand virgins.
Kaplan, Joel H., and Sheila Stowell. Theatre and Fashion: Oscar Wilde to the Suffragettes. Cambridge University Press.
84
Ursula was said to have been martyred together with her thousand virgin companions, though this legend probably stems from a...
Friends, Associates
Viola Meynell
VM
met Lawrence
through Ivy Low
. Enthusiastic about his writing, she offered to lend him her cottage and to do his typing. During his stay on the Meynells' property, Lawrence introduced Viola to Ottoline Morrell
Textual Production
Viola Meynell
Lady Cynthia Asquith
, who had been a close friend of Barrie's, and who since his death in 1937 was managing his estate, approached VM
about editing a selection of his letters that would allay...
Literary responses
Barbara Pym
It was well reviewed by another novelist, Lady Cynthia Asquith
.