Rosamond Lehmann

Author profile

born

February 03, 1901 in Buckinghamshire, The United Kingdom

died

March 12, 1990

gender

female

genre

Literature & Fiction

About this author

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Rosamond Nina Lehmann was born in Bourne End, Buckinghamshire, as the second daughter of Rudolph Lehmann and his wife Alice Davis, a New Englander. Her father Rudolph Chambers Lehmann was a liberal MP, and editor of the Daily News. John Lehmann (1907-1989) was her brother; one of her two sisters was the famous actress Beatrix Lehmann.

In 1919 she went to Girton College, University of Cambridge to read English Literature, an unusual thing for a woman to do at that time. In December 1923[1:][2:] she married Leslie Runciman (later 2nd Viscount Runciman of Doxford) (1900-1989), and the couple went to live in Newcastle upon Tyne. It was an unhappy marriage,[3:] and they separated in 1927 and were divorced later that year.

In 1927, Lehmann publishe...more Rosamond Nina Lehmann was born in Bourne End, Buckinghamshire, as the second daughter of Rudolph Lehmann and his wife Alice Davis, a New Englander. Her father Rudolph Chambers Lehmann was a liberal MP, and editor of the Daily News. John Lehmann (1907-1989) was her brother; one of her two sisters was the famous actress Beatrix Lehmann.

In 1919 she went to Girton College, University of Cambridge to read English Literature, an unusual thing for a woman to do at that time. In December 1923[1:][2:] she married Leslie Runciman (later 2nd Viscount Runciman of Doxford) (1900-1989), and the couple went to live in Newcastle upon Tyne. It was an unhappy marriage,[3:] and they separated in 1927 and were divorced later that year.

In 1927, Lehmann published her first novel, Dusty Answer, to great critical and popular acclaim. The novel's heroine, Judith, is attracted to both men and women, and interacts with fairly openly gay and lesbian characters during her years at Cambridge. The novel was a succès de scandale. Though none of her later novels were as successful as her first, Lehmann went on to publish six more novels, a play (No More Music, 1939), a collection of short stories (The Gypsy's Baby & Other Stories, 1946), a spiritual autobiography (The Swan in the Evening, 1967), and a photographic memoir of her friends (Rosamond Lehmann's Album, 1985), many of whom were famous Bloomsbury figures such as Leonard and Virginia Woolf, Carrington, and Lytton Strachey. She also translated two French novels into English: Jacques Lemarchand's Genevieve (1948) and Jean Cocteau's Children of the Game (1955). Her novels include A Note in Music (1930), Invitation to the Waltz (1932), The Weather in the Streets (1936), The Ballad and the Source (1944), The Echoing Grove (1953), and A Sea-Grape Tree (1976).

In 1928, Lehmann married Wogan Philipps, an artist. They had two children, a son Hugo (1929-1999) and a daughter Sarah or Sally (1934-1958), but the marriage quickly fell apart during the late Thirties with her Communist husband leaving to take part in the Spanish Civil War. During World War II she helped edit and contributed to New Writing, a periodical edited by her brother. She had an affair with Goronwy Rees and then a "very public affair" for nine years (1941-1950) with the married Cecil Day-Lewis, who eventually left her for his second wife.

Her 1953 novel The Echoing Grove was made into the 2002 film Heart of Me, with Helena Bonham Carter as the main character, Dinah. Her book The Ballad and the Source depicts an unhappy marriage from the point of view of a child, and has been compared to Henry James' What Maisie Knew.

The Swan in the Evening (1967) is an autobiography which Lehmann described as her "last testament". In it, she intimately describes the emotions she felt at the birth of her daughter Sally, and also when Sally died abruptly of poliomyelitis at the age of 23 (or 24) in 1958 while in Jakarta. She never recovered from Sally's death. Lehmann claimed to have had some psychic experiences, documented in Moments of Truth.

Lehmann was awarded the CBE in 1982 and died at Clareville Grove, London on 12 March 1990, aged 89.

(Source: wikipedia)(less)

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Books by Rosamond Lehmann

Average rating: 3.91 · 1,115 ratings · 136 reviews · 14 distinct works

	Invitation to the Waltz 3.99 avg rating — 145 ratings — published 1932 — 12 editions	My rating:
	Dusty Answer by Rosamond Lehmann, Jonathan Coe (Introduction) 3.93 avg rating — 112 ratings — published 1927 — 12 editions	My rating:
	The Weather in the Streets 3.78 avg rating — 102 ratings — published 1936 — 5 editions	My rating:
	The Echoing Grove 3.71 avg rating — 55 ratings — 8 editions	My rating:
	The Ballad and the Source 3.49 avg rating — 35 ratings — published 1944 — 8 editions	My rating:
	A Note in Music 4.19 avg rating — 21 ratings — published 1930 — 4 editions	My rating:
	The Swan in the Evening: Fragments of an Inner Life by Rosamond Lehmann, Justine Picardie (Introduction) 3.55 avg rating — 11 ratings — published 1967 — 2 editions	My rating:
	A Sea-Grape Tree by Rosamond Lehmann, Janet Watts (Introduction) 3.80 avg rating — 10 ratings — published 1978 — 4 editions	My rating:
	The Gipsy's Baby by Rosamond Lehmann, Niall Griffiths (Foreword) 3.88 avg rating — 8 ratings — 4 editions	My rating:
	Virago Modern Classics Omnibus: Vol 3 The Weather In The Streets / All Passion Spent / Frost In May by Rosamond Lehmann, Antonia White, Vita Sackville-West 4.50 avg rating — 2 ratings — 3 editions	My rating:

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Quotes by Rosamond Lehmann

“I want to do something absolutely different, or perhaps nothing at all: just stay where I am, in my home, and absorb each hour, each day, and be alone; and read and think; and walk about the garden in the night; and wait, wait...”
― Rosamond Lehmann, Invitation to the Waltz

5 people liked it

“Advice to Young Journal Keepers. Be lenient with yourself. Conceal your worst faults, leave out your most shameful thoughts, actions, and temptations. Give yourself all the good and interesting qualities you want and haven't got. If you should die young, what comfort would it be to your relatives to read the truth and have to say: It is not a pearl we have lost, but a swine?”
― Rosamond Lehmann, Invitation to the Waltz

tags: journaling , journals

2 people liked it

“Another five minutes, thought Olivia, and shut her eyes. Not to fall asleep again; but to go back as it were and do the thing gradually---detach oneself softly, float up serenely from the clinging delectable fringes. Oh, heavenly sleep! Why must one cast it from one, all unprepared, unwilling? Caught out again by Kate in the very act! You're not trying , you could wake up if you wanted to: that was their attitude. And regularly one began the day convicted of inferiority, of a sluggish voluptuous nature, seriously lacking in will-power.”
― Rosamond Lehmann, Invitation to the Waltz

1 person liked it

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Polls

What fiction book would you like to read for December's group read?

The Lost World by Arthur Conan Doyle

4 votes, 44.4%

Invitation to the Waltz by Rosamond Lehmann

2 votes, 22.2%

Whose Body? by Dorothy L. Sayers

1 vote, 11.1%

Footsteps in the Dark by Georgette Heyer

1 vote, 11.1%

The House in Paris by Elizabeth Bowen

1 vote, 11.1%

9 total votes

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Bright Young Things: Suffragist & Feminist Fiction	17	23	May 30, 2012 05:12pm

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Rosamond Lehmann

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Topics Mentioning This Author

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Books by Rosamond Lehmann