Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
Elizabeth Jenkins
-
Standard Name: Jenkins, Elizabeth
Birth Name: Margaret Elizabeth Heald Jenkins
EJ
, whose productive period extended from just after World War Two into the twenty-first century, was the author of half a dozen historical biographies and twice that many novels (several of which portray women in the position of victims of one kind or another), besides a play, book reviews, and a memoir. Some of her works have been often reprinted.
As Elizabeth Jenkins
told it, this began as an idea for a reportage novel illuminating the secrets of some particular métier. Jenkins hoped for something of morbid decadence reminiscent of Edgar Allan Poe
, but...
Textual Production
Naomi Royde-Smith
NRS
dedicated her work to Florence Mary Parsons
(calling her, with formal correctness, Mrs. Clement Parsons), author of the twenty-five-year-old definitive biography of Siddons. People she acknowledges include her husband (for advice about old...
Textual Production
Agatha Christie
The origin of the stage play was a radio play. Elizabeth Jenkins
tells a story that this was based on the actual killing of a war evacuee by the farmer with whom he and his...
Textual Production
Margaret Kennedy
Other notable women authors also contributed to this series, including three of MK
's writing friends: Lettice Cooper
, Elizabeth Jenkins
, and Marghanita Laski
.
Powell, Violet. The Constant Novelist. W. Heinemann.
She named her detective-hero Roderick Alleyn after the Elizabethan actor and theatre entrepreneur Edward Alleyn
(who founded the school where her father had been educated, and a biography of whom by Elizabeth Jenkins
was published...
Residence
Elizabeth Bowen
EB
later speculated about what her feelings would be if Bowen's Court were to burn down. Elizabeth Jenkins
found it a beautiful and mournful spectacle. . . . so scantily furnished as to seem almost...
Residence
Theodora Benson
Late in the second world war she was living in a small flat perched at the top of one of the tall buildings of Piccadilly, with no storage space and precious possessions stacked around...
Reception
Charlotte Yonge
E. M. Delafield
writes that during the 1940s CY
retained wide popularity: that the London Library
's copies of her books were often checked out by readers, and that when Delafield wrote to the Times...
Publishing
Theodora Benson
Elizabeth Jenkins
wrote that before the second world war TB
had a brilliant, brief career in popular journalism, like the flash of a kingfisher across a stream.
Jenkins, Elizabeth. The View from Downshire Hill. Michael Johnson.
59
After the war she was commissioned by...
Occupation
Theodora Benson
During the Second World War TB
worked for the Ministry of Information
, writing Speaker's Notes, material for public speeches explaining the war effort.Elizabeth Jenkins
, her assistant, said she was brilliant at this...
Literary Setting
Elizabeth Bowen
The novel has two heroines: Portia, a fifteen-year-old, and Anna Quayne, wife of Thomas Quayne. Portia, Thomas' half-sister, comes to live with the Quaynes in their Regent's Park house (based on EB
's own London...
Literary responses
Norah Lofts
Elizabeth Jenkins
found The House at Sunset admirable, written with unflagging buoyancy, intensity, vigour and emotional colour.
A reviewer of the recent reprints had some reservations about the narrative method, but praised...
Literary responses
Mollie Panter-Downes
MPD
's contemporary the future novelist Elizabeth Jenkins
later remembered devouring the successive instalments of this book in the Daily Mirror.
Beauman, Nicola, and Mollie Panter-Downes. “Introduction”. One Fine Day, Virago, p. vii - xvi.
ix
Reviewers were impressed: the Times was surprised at such maturity of style...
Literary responses
Angela Thirkell
AT
never over-estimated her own talent. She wrote that she and her fictional alter-ego, Laura Morland, each write the same book each year with unfailing regularity, and called her own work not very good books...
Timeline
25-26 June 1483: The child King Edward V was deposed, and...
22 July 1949: The house in the village of Chawton in Hampshire...
Women writers item
22 July 1949
The house in the village of Chawton in Hampshire where Jane Austen
lived with her mother and sister from 1809 until her death was opened to the public, having been bought for three thousand pounds...
Early 1957: John Braine's novel Room at the Top was published...
Writing climate item
Early 1957
John Braine
's novelRoom at the Top was published by Gollancz
after eight rejections, on the advice of Elizabeth Jenkins
in her capacity as publisher's reader.