Dorothy Whipple

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Standard Name: Whipple, Dorothy
Birth Name: Dorothy Stirrup
Married Name: Dorothy Whipple
DW was a popular and successful serious novelist from the 1920s to the 1950s, who also published short stories and a delightful childhood autobiography, and from whose notebooks a form of adult literary autobiography was compiled after her death. She lived all her life in Blackburn, Lancashire (where most of her fiction is set), and Yorkshire. Although forays to London kept her in touch with the literary world of her day, her provincial status was probably a factor in her quick descent into critical oblivion, even while her novels were regularly reprinted. The most recent wave of reprints has brought her name before the public again but has not as yet generated a critical dialogue.
Colour photograph of a blue plaque on the brick wall of Dorothy Whipple's birthplace in Blackburn, Lancs. The plaque has a coat of arms at the top, and reads "The novelist Dorothy Whipple (née Stirrup) (1893-1966) was born in this house on 26th February 1893."

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
Intertextuality and Influence Elizabeth Taylor
ET borrowed for this novel from the opening of an apparently unpublished short story by Dorothy Whipple , Last Laugh.
Beauman, Nicola. The Other Elizabeth Taylor. Persephone Books, 2009.
363n3
Her book scored a success in a television adaptation, with Celia Johnson in...
Textual Features E. M. Delafield
EMD defiantly maintains a light, satirical tone despite the gravity of the situation. She focuses deliberately on amusing characters and situations: evacuees who return to London because they cannot tolerate country life; a bureaucrat at...

Timeline

23 August 1939
Hitler 's and Stalin 's German-Soviet non-aggression pact was signed by foreign ministers Ribbentrop and Molotov .
27 September 1939
Warsaw fell to Hitler 's invading army after twenty days' siege and bombardment.
End of May 1941
Following the German attack on Crete on 20 May (billed as the world's first airborne invasion), fierce fighting across the island ended when the British navy evacuated almost 15,000 soldiers.