Nava Atlas's Blog, page 14

Dalene Matthee’s South African “Forest Novels”

A lifelong advocate for environmental rights, South African author Dalene Matthee is renowned for her “Forest novels” series. These four books, originally written in Afrikaans, present narratives set in the country’s Knysna Forests.

Dalene Matthee’s (1938 – 2005) books have achieved international acclaim. They have been translated into multiple languages, including English, Icelandic, French, and German. More than a million copies of her works have sold.

. . . . . . . . . . .

More about Dalene Mathee
Photo:  Uitgewers Publishers
. . . . . . . . . . .

Matthee’s background and the Forest novels

Dalene Matthee, born Dalena Scott, was born in Riversdale in the Southern Cape (South Africa). She studied at the local high school, from which she graduated in 1957.

That same year, Dalene married Larius Matthee. Her studies continued in Oudtshoorn, where she studied music until she moved to the Holy Cross Convent in Graff-Reinet.

Matthee published her first novel in 1970, a children’s story called Die Twaalfuur-stokkie (which translates to English as The Twelve o’ Clock Stick).

This debut wasn’t translated until 1991, with Matthee in charge of the first translation of her work into English. She called English “beautifully reserved” in an interview for The Daily News, saying that she found it important to translate the emotion from one language to another.

In 1982, Matthee published a short story collection called The Judas Goat (Afrikaans: Die Judasbok) and a novel titled A House for Nadia (in Afrikaans: `n Huis vir Nadia). She also wrote short stories for many local magazines, including Huisgenoot and Vrouekeur.

Dalene Matthee’s lifelong love of the Knysna Forest inspired the series of four Forest novels: Circles in a Forest, Fiela’s Child, The Mulberry Forest, and Dream Forest.

The first, Circles in a Forest, was published in 1984. After years of painstaking research in archives and libraries, it launched the series that reflected her lifelong love for the forest and its inhabitants.

. . . . . . . . . . .

Circles in a Forest (1984)

Circles in a Forest is a story of conservation, following the life of a woodcutter named Saul Barnard. An outcast from his community, he heads into the forest and gets to know the legendary Old Foot – an elephant roaming the forest on the verge of being destroyed.

According to the book’s description, “Matthee focuses on conservation and strongly speaks out against the reckless destruction of the indigenous forest.” Matthee was known for her intensive research, even providing a map of Saul’s route through the forest.

The book’s title is drawn from one of Matthee’s personal experiences. Unsure what to write about, she took a walk through the forest; when she stopped at circles on a walking trail, she also had the core thoughts of the novel.

The book was adapted to film in 1989, starring Ian Bannen, Arnold Vosloo, and Judi Trott.

. . . . . . . . . . .

Fiela’s Child (1985)

Fiela’s Child is the second of the Forest novels, starting with the story of Fiela Komoetie who adopts an Afrikaner boy named Benjamin.

Soon the interracial adoption begins a legal standoff, where Fiela is placed on trial and put against an opposing white family – who are convinced that Benjamin is their son.

The book’s tagline is a good description of its storyline: “God forgives many things, but God never forgives us the wrong we do to a child.” Lives are torn apart when Benjamin is seized and forced to live with the van Rooyen family, where he is never quite at home. 

Fiela’s Child was adapted to film in 1988, and again in 2019.

. . . . . . . . . . .

The Mulberry Forest (1989)

The Mulberry Forest continues the story of the forest’s inhabitants, telling the tale of immigrant mulberry farmers establishing a colony in the middle of the forest setting. This novel introduces the character of Silas Miggel.

Things don’t go as planned when the mulberry trees refuse to grow in harsh conditions. The story becomes a fight for survival. 

Matthee said that she chose the name Silas Miggel over several days – ultimately choosing the name from the Bible, like many forest inhabitants of the time would have done. The name Silas, she said, translated to “of the forest.”

. . . . . . . . . . .

Dream Forest (2003)

Dream Forest is the last book in the series, written two years before the author’s passing. In this book, nature conservation and the preservation of natural resources remain important themes – this time, expressed as a romance that plays out amidst the Knysna forest setting.

The novel follows its heroine, Karoliena Kapp, a beautiful young woman who knows the forest better than anyone.

Karoliena is soon married off to Johannes, a well-to-do man from the city – but she soon discovers that she hates the thought of leaving the forest and everything she knows behind. Karoliena makes a daring escape, fleeing back into the Knysna forest.

This final novel in the series was, like its predecessors, adapted to film, marking South Africa’s film entry for the 2021 Oscars.

. . . . . . . . . .

Photo: Wikimedia Commons
. . . . . . . . . .

Dalene Matthee’s legacy and memorial in the Knysa Forest

Matthee died in 2005. She had donated her life’s work and papers to the National Afrikaans Literary Museum and Research Centre (NALN).

Her efforts made such an impact that a Dalene Matthee Memorial dedicated to her memory is situated in the Knysa Forest. Also located there is the Dalene Matthee Big Tree – one of the oldest and largest trees still found in this area.

The walking trail in Knysna is also named for her first forest novel, following much of her story’s locations.

With the Forest books, Dalene Matthee forever changed the way people view the Knysna forest, having spent a lifetime dedicated to telling stories that delve deep into nature and human consciousness.

You may also enjoy South African Author Dalene Mathee: A Daughter’s Tribute.

Contributed by Alex Jansen, a journalist, author, and proofreader. He has written for a variety of publications and websites, with a radar calibrated for gothic, gonzo and the weird. His features, posts, articles and interviews have been published in People Magazine, ATKV Taalgenoot, LitNet, The Citizen, Funds for Writers, and The South African, among other publications.

The post Dalene Matthee’s South African “Forest Novels” appeared first on Literary Ladies Guide.

Dalene Matthee’s South African “Forest Books” Novels

A lifelong advocate for environmental rights, South African author Dalene Matthee is renowned for her “Forest books” series. These four novels, originally written in Afrikaans, present narratives set in the country’s Knysna Forests.

Dalene Matthee’s (1938 – 2005) books have achieved international acclaim. They have been translated into multiple languages, including English, Icelandic, French, and German. More than a million copies of her works have sold.

. . . . . . . . . . .

More about Dalene Mathee
Photo:  Uitgewers Publishers
. . . . . . . . . . .

Matthee’s background and the Forest novels

Dalene Matthee, born Dalena Scott, was born in Riversdale in the Southern Cape (South Africa). She studied at the local high school, from which she graduated in 1957.

That same year, Dalene married Larius Matthee. Her studies continued in Oudtshoorn, where she studied music until she moved to the Holy Cross Convent in Graff-Reinet.

Matthee published her first novel in 1970, a children’s story called Die Twaalfuur-stokkie (which translates to English as The Twelve o’ Clock Stick).

This debut wasn’t translated until 1991, with Matthee in charge of the first translation of her work into English. She called English “beautifully reserved” in an interview for The Daily News, saying that she found it important to translate the emotion from one language to another.

In 1982, Matthee published a short story collection called The Judas Goat (Afrikaans: Die Judasbok) and a novel titled A House for Nadia (in Afrikaans: `n Huis vir Nadia). She also wrote short stories for many local magazines, including Huisgenoot and Vrouekeur.

Dalene Matthee’s lifelong love of the Knysna Forest inspired the series of four Forest novels: Circles in a Forest, Fiela’s Child, The Mulberry Forest, and Dream Forest.

The first, Circles in a Forest, was published in 1984. After years of painstaking research in archives and libraries, it launched the series that reflected her lifelong love for the forest and its inhabitants.

. . . . . . . . . . .

Circles in a Forest (1984)

Circles in a Forest is a story of conservation, following the life of a woodcutter named Saul Barnard. An outcast from his community, he heads into the forest and gets to know the legendary Old Foot – an elephant roaming the forest on the verge of being destroyed.

According to the book’s description, “Matthee focuses on conservation and strongly speaks out against the reckless destruction of the indigenous forest.” Matthee was known for her intensive research, even providing a map of Saul’s route through the forest.

The book’s title is drawn from one of Matthee’s personal experiences. Unsure what to write about, she took a walk through the forest; when she stopped at circles on a walking trail, she also had the core thoughts of the novel.

The book was adapted to film in 1989, starring Ian Bannen, Arnold Vosloo, and Judi Trott.

. . . . . . . . . . .

Fiela’s Child (1985)

Fiela’s Child is the second of the Forest novels, starting with the story of Fiela Komoetie who adopts an Afrikaner boy named Benjamin.

Soon the interracial adoption begins a legal standoff, where Fiela is placed on trial and put against an opposing white family – who are convinced that Benjamin is their son.

The book’s tagline is a good description of its storyline: “God forgives many things, but God never forgives us the wrong we do to a child.” Lives are torn apart when Benjamin is seized and forced to live with the van Rooyen family, where he is never quite at home. 

Fiela’s Child was adapted to film in 1988, and again in 2019.

. . . . . . . . . . .

The Mulberry Forest (1989)

The Mulberry Forest continues the story of the forest’s inhabitants, telling the tale of immigrant mulberry farmers establishing a colony in the middle of the forest setting. This novel introduces the character of Silas Miggel.

Things don’t go as planned when the mulberry trees refuse to grow in harsh conditions. The story becomes a fight for survival. 

Matthee said that she chose the name Silas Miggel over several days – ultimately choosing the name from the Bible, like many forest inhabitants of the time would have done. The name Silas, she said, translated to “of the forest.”

. . . . . . . . . . .

Dream Forest (2003)

Dream Forest is the last book in the series, written two years before the author’s passing. In this book, nature conservation and the preservation of natural resources remain important themes – this time, expressed as a romance that plays out amidst the Knysna forest setting.

The novel follows its heroine, Karoliena Kapp, a beautiful young woman who knows the forest better than anyone.

Karoliena is soon married off to Johannes, a well-to-do man from the city – but she soon discovers that she hates the thought of leaving the forest and everything she knows behind. Karoliena makes a daring escape, fleeing back into the Knysna forest.

This final novel in the series was, like its predecessors, adapted to film, marking South Africa’s film entry for the 2021 Oscars.

. . . . . . . . . .

Photo: Wikimedia Commons
. . . . . . . . . .

Dalene Matthee’s legacy and memorial in the Knysa Forest

Matthee died in 2005. She had donated her life’s work and papers to the National Afrikaans Literary Museum and Research Centre (NALN).

Her efforts made such an impact that a Dalene Matthee Memorial dedicated to her memory is situated in the Knysa Forest. Also located there is the Dalene Matthee Big Tree – one of the oldest and largest trees still found in this area.

The walking trail in Knysna is also named for her first forest novel, following much of her story’s locations.

With the Forest books, Dalene Matthee forever changed the way people view the Knysna forest, having spent a lifetime dedicated to telling stories that delve deep into nature and human consciousness.

Contributed by Alex J. Coyne, a journalist, author, and proofreader. He has written for a variety of publications and websites, with a radar calibrated for gothic, gonzo and the weird. His features, posts, articles and interviews have been published in People Magazine, ATKV Taalgenoot, LitNet, The Citizen, Funds for Writers, and The South African, among other publications.

The post Dalene Matthee’s South African “Forest Books” Novels appeared first on Literary Ladies Guide.

Maria Edgeworth, prolific and influential English novelist

Maria Edgeworth (January 1, 1767 – May 22, 1849), was an Anglo-Irish author whose work has lately been considered deserving of reconsideration. She is best known for novels of Irish life and children’s stories.

Now overshadowed by her contemporaries, Jane Austen and the Brontë sisters, there are compelling arguments in favor of why her work still matters.

The  following biography was adapted from the entry in Dictionary of National Biography, 1885–1900, by Leslie Stephen (who happened to be Virginia Woolf’s father):

 

Early years and education

The daughter of Richard Lovell Edgeworth and his first wife, Anna Maria Elers, Maria was born in Black Bourton, Oxfordshire, England on January 1, 1767, and spent her infancy there.

According to Britannica:

“She lived in England until 1782, when the family moved to Edgeworthstown, County Longford, in midwestern Ireland, where Maria, then 15 and the eldest daughter, assisted her father in managing his estate. In this way she acquired the knowledge of rural economy and of the Irish peasantry that was to be the backbone of her novels.

Domestic life at Edgeworthstown was busy and happy. Encouraged by her father, Maria began her writing in the common sitting room, where the 21 other children in the family provided material and audience for her stories.

She published them in 1796 as The Parent’s Assistant. Even the intrusive moralizing, attributed to her father’s editing, does not wholly suppress their vitality, and the children who appear in them, especially the impetuous Rosamond, are the first real children in English literature since Shakespeare.”

Maria suffered from attempts to increase her growth by mechanical devices, including hanging by the neck. In spite of this contrivance, she always remained small.

She learned to dance, though she could never learn music; she had given early proofs of talent at her first school; she was a good French and Italian scholar, and, like Scott, won credit as a storyteller from her schoolmates.

Some of her holidays were spent with Thomas Day, her father’s great friend, at Anningsley, Surrey. He dosed her with tar water for an inflammation of the eyes, which had threatened a loss of sight, but encouraged her studies, gave her good advice, and won her permanent respect.

 

Gaining responsibilities in young womanhood

In 1782, she accompanied her father and his third wife to Edgeworthstown, and at his suggestion began to translate Mme. de Genlis’s Adèle et Théodore.

Though still very shy, she saw some good society; she was noticed by Lady Moira, who often stayed with her daughter, Lady Granard, at Castle Forbes, and was frequently at Pakenham Hall, belonging to Lord Longford, a connection and a close friend of Mr. Edgeworth’s.

Her father employed her in keeping accounts and in dealing with his tenants. The education of her little brother Henry was entrusted to her care.

She thus acquired the familiarity with fashionable people and with the Irish peasantry which was to be of use in her novels, as well as a practical knowledge of education.

Her father made her a confidential friend, and though timid on horseback, she delighted in long rides with him for the opportunity of conversation. He became her adviser and to some extent her collaborator in the literary work which for some years was her main occupation.

Maria began to write stories on a slate, which she read to her sisters, and copied out if approved by them. She wrote the “Freeman Family,” afterward developed into “Patronage,” for the amusement of her stepmother, Elizabeth, when convalescing in 1787.

In 1791 her father took his wife to England, and Maria was left in charge of the children, with whom she joined the parents at Clifton in December.

 

First published writings

They returned to Edgeworthstown at the end of 1793. Here, while taking her share in the family life, she first made her appearance as an author. The “Letters to Literary Ladies,” a defense of female education, came out in 1795.

In 1796, the first volume of the “Parent’s Assistant” was published. In 1798 the marriage of her father to his fourth wife, to whom she had at first a natural objection, brought her an intimate friend in her new stepmother.

For fifty-one years their affectionate relations were never even clouded. The whole family party, which included, besides the children, two sisters of the second Mrs. Edgeworth, Charlotte Sneyd, and Mary Sneyd, lived together on the most affectionate terms.

In 1798 she published, in conjunction with her father, two volumes of Practical Education, presenting in a number of discursive essays a modification of the theories started by Rousseau’s Émile and adopted by Mr. Edgeworth and Thomas Day.

. . . . . . . . . .

Of Maria Edgeworth’s many novels,
Belinda (1801) is best known today
. . . . . . . . . .

Maria Edgeworth’s novels for adults

In 1800, Maria began her novels for adult readers with Castle Rackrent. It was published anonymously, and written without her father’s assistance. Its vigorous descriptions of Irish character made it a quick success, and the second edition appeared with her name credited.

Belinda followed in 1801, followed in 1802 by Essay on Irish Bulls,, a collaboration with her father. Maria had now achieved fame as an author.

Practical Education had been translated by M. Pictet of Geneva, who also published translations of the Moral Tales in his Bibliothèque Britannique. He visited the Edgeworths in Ireland; and she soon accompanied her father on a visit to France during the peace of Amiens, receiving many civilities from distinguished literary people.

 

Turning down marriage for a literary life

In Paris, Maria met a Swedish count, Edelcrantz, who made her an offer. As she could not think of retiring to Stockholm, and he felt bound to continue there, the match failed.

Her spirits suffered for a time, and though all communication dropped she remembered him through life, and directly after her return wrote ‘Leonora,’ a novel intended to meet his tastes.

The party returned to England in March 1803, and, after a short visit to Edinburgh, to Edgeworthstown, where Maria set to work upon her stories. She wrote in the common sitting-room, amidst all manner of domestic distractions, and submitted everything to her father, who frequently inserted passages of his own.

Popular Tales and the Modern Griselda appeared in 1804, Leonora in 1806, the first series of Tales of Fashionable Life (containing “Eunice”’ “The Dun,” “Manœuvring,” and “Almeria”) in 1809. The second series (“Absentee,” “Vivian,” and “Mme. de Fleury”) in 1812.

She finished Patronage, which she had begun in 1787. It finally came out in 1814. She set to work on Harrington and Ormond, published together in 1817. She received a few sheets in time to give them to her father on his birthday in May 1817. He had been especially interested in Ormond, to which he had contributed a few scenes. He wrote a short preface to the book and died the following June.

 

Family and health troubles

After Mr. Edgeworth’s death, his unmarried son Lovell kept up the house. Mr. Edgeworth had left his Memoirs to his daughter, with an injunction to complete them and publish his part unaltered.

She had prepared the book for press in the summer of 1818, though in much depression, due to family troubles, sickness among the peasantry, and an alarming weakness of her eyes.

She gave up reading, writing, and needlework almost entirely for two years, when her eyes completely recovered. Her sisters, meanwhile, acted as amanuenses. She visited Bowood in the autumn of 1818, chiefly to take the advice of her friend Dumont on the Memoirs.

The Memoirs were published during her absence in 1820 and were bitterly attacked in the Quarterly Review. Still, they reached a second edition in 1828, and a third in 1844, when she rewrote her own part.

 

More literary endeavors

Maria continued settling into her domestic and literary occupations. For the rest of her life, Edgeworthstown continued to be her residence, though she frequently visited London, and made occasional tours.

The most remarkable was a visit to Scotland in the spring of 1823. Sir Walter Scott welcomed her most heartily, and, after seeing her in Edinburgh, received her in Abbotsford. She had read the Lay of the Last Minstrel on its first appearance during her convalescence from a fever in 1805.

Scott declared (in the last chapter of Waverley, and later in the preface to the collected novels) that her descriptions of Irish character had encouraged him to make a similar experiment on Scottish character in the Waverley novels. He sent her a copy of Waverley on its first publication, though without acknowledging the authorship, and she replied with enthusiasm.

During the commercial troubles of 1826, Maria resumed the management of the estate for her brother Lovell, having given up receiving the rents on her father’s death. She showed great business talent and took a keen personal interest in the poor on the estate.

Although greatly occupied by such duties, she again took to writing, beginning her last novel, Helen, about 1830. It didn’t appear until 1834, and soon reached a second edition. It had scarcely the success of her earlier stories. Her style had gone out of fashion.

 

Later years and legacy 

Amidst her various occupations, Maria’s intellectual vivacity remained. She began to learn Spanish at the age of seventy. She kept up a correspondence which in some ways gives even a better idea of her powers than her novels. She paid her last visit to London in 1844.

She knew more or less most of the eminent literary persons of her time, including Joanna Baillie, with whom she stayed at Hampstead, Bentham’s friend, Sidney Smith, Dumont, and Ricardo, whom she visited at Gatcombe Park, Gloucestershire.

Jane Austen sent her Emma soon after its first publication. Maria admired her work, though it doesn’t appear that they had any personal relations.

During the famine of 1846, Maria did her best to relieve the sufferings of the people. Some of her admirers in Boston, Massachusetts, sent one hundred and fifty barrels of flour addressed to “Miss Edgeworth for her poor.” The porters who carried it ashore refused to be paid, and she sent to each of them a woolen comforter knitted by herself.

The deaths of her brother Francis in 1846 and of her favorite sister Fanny in 1848 tried her severely, and she was already weakened by attacks of illness.

 

Summing up the life and work of Maria Edgeworth

Maria Edgeworth was of diminutive stature, and few portraits of her exist. It seems from Scott’s descriptions that her appearance faithfully represented the combined vivacity, good sense, and amiability of her character. No one had stronger family affections, and the lives of very few authors have been as useful and honorable.

The didacticism of the stories for children has not prevented their permanent popularity. Her more ambitious efforts are injured by the same tendency. She has not the delicacy of touch of Miss Austen, more than the imaginative power of Scott.

But the brightness of her style, her keen observation of character, and her shrewd sense and vigor make her novels still readable, despite obvious artistic defects. Though her puppets are apt to be wooden, they act their parts with spirit enough to make us forgive the perpetual moral lectures.

She died in the arms of her stepmother on May 22, 1849.

More about Maria Edgeworth

Major works

In addition to the works for adult readers listed following, Maria Edgeworth’s books for children have been reprinted in innumerable forms, and often translated. The first collective edition of her novels appeared in fourteen volumes, 1825, others 1848, 1856.

Letters to Literary Ladies, 1795.Parent’s Assistant, first part, 1796; published in 6 vols. in 1800Practical Education, 1798Castle Rackrent, 1800Early Lessons, 1801Belinda, 1801.Moral Tales, 1801Irish Bulls, 1802Popular Tales, 1804Modern Griselda, 1804Leonora, 1806Tales from Fashionable Life (first series), 1812.Patronage, ca.1814Harrington, 1817Ormond, 1817Comic Dramas, 1817Memoirs of R. L. Edgeworth (vol. ii. by Maria), 1820.Sequels to Harry and Lucy, Rosamond, and Frank, from the Early Lessons, 1822–5.Helen, 1834Orlandino, 1834

More information

The Case of Maria Edgeworth Britannica Public domain works on Project Gutenberg Audio editions on Librivox

The post Maria Edgeworth, prolific and influential English novelist appeared first on Literary Ladies Guide.

Elspeth Barker, Author of O Caledonia

Elspeth Barker (November 16, 1940 – April 21, 2022) was a Scottish novelist and journalist. Her only novel, O Caledonia, published in 1991 and reissued in 2021, has been hailed as a classic of modern Scottish literature.

Darkly humorous, skillful, lyrical, and somewhat autobiographical, it tells the story of the life and death of a young girl named Janet. It won several awards on its first publication and remained Elspeth Barker’s only published work of fiction.

 

Early life in Scotland and Oxford

Elspeth Barker was born Elspeth Roberta Cameron Langlands in Edinburgh, Scotland to Robert and Elizabeth Langlands, who had married in 1939. Robert was enlisted in the Royal Scots for the duration of World War II. In addition to Elspeth, the couple had three other daughters – Finella, Alison, and Flora, and a son, David.

For the first years of Elspeth’s life, the family lived in Edinburgh, with a holiday home in Elie. Elizabeth in particular loved the beach and swam in the sea no matter the weather or season.

When Elspeth was seven the family moved to Drumtochty Castle in Aberdeenshire, a Neo-Gothic castle reputedly purchased by her father from the King of Norway.

Elizabeth was a talented and dedicated teacher, especially of English, and together with Robert, she ran the castle as a boys’ prep school. Elspeth (and presumably her siblings) attended classes along with the paying pupils.

Much like her heroine Janet in O Caledonia, Elspeth later remembered the torment of being surrounded by boys who pulled her braids, poked her chest, and threw cricket balls at her. She took refuge in books and a love of animals.

Elspeth marked the passage of adolescence with the coming and going of pets: “I remember being 18 and the dog that had been there all my life – a golden retriever called Rab — died. And I remember that, far more than being allowed a gin and tonic or going to university, the death of that dog signaled the end of my childhood.”

Elspeth later went to boarding school at St Leonard’s in Fife, and then to Somerville College, Oxford in 1958, where she read the classics.

She never graduated, however; she fell asleep in her final exam, and didn’t realize that her father had persuaded the principal to allow her to retake it. Her failure to even attend the rescheduled exam led to her being “sent down” with no degree.

 

Marriage, children, and a Bohemian Lifestyle

After the disaster at Oxford, Elspeth moved to London, where she worked in a bookshop, and as a waitress. At age twenty-two, she was introduced to poet George Barker (then fifty years old) by his former lover, the Canadian author Elizabeth Smart. Smart was the author of By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept.

George Barker was married, though estranged from his Roman Catholic wife Jessica, and already had ten children — including four with Elizabeth.

Despite initially saying that she found George to be “incredibly rude,” Elspeth began a love affair with him that would last for the rest of his life. Later she became what she described as a “co-wife” with Elizabeth. She was unable to marry George until 1989, after Jessica died.

In the 1960s, the couple took a loan from playwright Harold Pinter and moved to Bintry House, a 17th-century farmhouse in Itteringham, Norfolk, which was owned by the National Trust. There, George wrote poetry while Elspeth taught classics at Renton Hill School for Girls. They had five children together — Raffaella, Lily, Sam, Roderick, and Alexander.

They led a bohemian lifestyle with a steady stream of visitors, and infamous Saturday night drinking parties that could sometimes turn violent.

Elspeth was known as an erudite, witty, and eccentric character: later, many of her friends would remember how she had no driving license, having repeatedly failed her test, but insisted on driving anyway while wearing a wig and sunglasses to fool the police.

. . . . . . . . . .

. . . . . . . . . .

O Caledonia

Elspeth’s first writing was commissioned by her daughter, Raffaella, who was then an editor at Harper’s Bazaar. The magazine was assembling a farm-themed issue, and Raffaella asked her mother to write something about her fondness for hens.

Elspeth then secured a contract for a novel after a submission of only a few pages. The resulting book, O Caledonia, was published in 1991, when she was fifty-one.

It was later described by novelist Ali Smith in a New York Times interview as “the best least-known novel of the 20th century…a sparkly, funny work of genius about class, romanticism, social tradition, and literary tradition.”

Glittering and darkly humorous, it opens with the death of a young girl, Janet. But rather than focusing on “whodunnit,” the novel tells the story of Janet’s short life in a bleak Scottish castle.

Clever and awkward, and a social and familial misfit, Janet learns poetry by heart and keeps a jackdaw as a pet. She assumes a certain semblance of outward conformity. The descriptions of the Highland landscape are vividly beautiful, and the novel as a whole is a lyrical showcase of Elspeth’s love of words and language.

O Caledonia has often been described as a coming-of-age novel, but this is a limiting view of a book that skillfully defies genre. It takes inspiration from the Gothic, classical myth, Shakespeare, nature writing, Scottish tradition, and what would now be termed auto-fiction.

The central theme — ostensibly that of a young girl growing up in trying circumstances — reaches into the universal struggle of the individual against authority; the forging and maintaining of an individual identity when everyone around you has their own ideas of what you should be.

It won the Winifred Holtby Prize, the David Higham Prize, the Angel Fiction Prize, and the Scottish Book Prize, as well as being shortlisted for the Whitbread First Novel Award (now the Costa Award).

 

A shift to journalism

George died not long after the publication of O Caledonia. Elspeth remained in Bintry House with her daughters nearby and several animals in residence, including her beloved pot-bellied pig Portia.

She turned to journalism, becoming a regular contributor to the Independent on Sunday, the London Review of Books, the Times Literary Supplement, the Guardian, the Observer, Country Living, and Vogue.

She had a reputation for filing perfect copy that needed little to no editing, and would usually either relay her articles over the phone or send them handwritten, often with shopping lists scribbled on the envelopes in which they were enclosed.

Elspeth also taught creative writing at Norwich University of the Arts alongside poet George Szirtes. She was a visiting professor of Fiction at Kansas University and tutored at the Arvon Foundation.

In 1997 she edited Loss: An Anthology, which included extracts from writers as wide-ranging as Ovid, Sylvia Plath, Carol Ann Duffy, John Donne, Rilke, Yeats, and Dylan Thomas. In 2012, an edition of her collected journalism called Dog Days was published.

 

Later years

Elspeth married again in 2007, to Bill Troop; they were divorced six years later. However, she was philosophical:

“At this interesting point of life, one may be whoever and whatever age one chooses. One may drink all night, smash bones in hunting accidents, travel the spinning globe. One may teach one’s grandchildren rude rhymes and Greek myths. One may also move very slowly round the garden in a shapeless coat, planting drifts of narcissus bulbs for later springs.”

O Caledonia was republished in 2021 with an introduction by Maggie O’Farrell (who had, coincidentally, worked on one of the book desks when Elspeth submitted her handwritten copy and often had to phone Elspeth for clarification when her handwriting proved elusive).

In this new introduction, O’Farrell summed up the sentiments of devoted readers on O Caledonia: “This book … is the equivalent of a literary phoenix – rare, thrilling, one of a kind. Read it, please, with that knowledge.”

As dementia gradually took hold, Elspeth moved into a care home in Aylsham, Norfolk. She died in April 2022 of old age.

Contributed by Elodie Barnes. Elodie is a writer and editor with a serious case of wanderlust. Her short fiction has been widely published online and is included in the Best Small Fictions 2022 Anthology published by Sonder Press. She is Books & Creative Writing Editor at Lucy Writers Platform, she is also co-facilitating What the Water Gave Us, an Arts Council England-funded anthology of emerging women writers from migrant backgrounds. She is currently working on a collection of short stories, and when not writing can usually be found planning the next trip abroad, or daydreaming her way back to 1920s Paris. Find her online at  Elodie Rose Barnes. 

More about Elspeth Barker

Major works

O Caledonia (1991; new edition 2021)Loss (1998)Notes from the Hen House: Collected Essays by Elspeth Barker (2023)

More information

Podcast episode on Lost Ladies of Lit Noir for the Anthropocene: On Elspeth Barker’s O Caledonia Obituary in The Guardian Obituary in the New York Times Tribute in The Book Hive

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Elinor Glyn, a Biography by Anthony Glyn (1955)

Elinor Glyn (October 17, 1864 – September 23, 1943) was best known as the author of the scandalous 1907 novel Three Weeks and for coining the expression “It Girl.” The following is adapted from a review of Elinor Glyn, a biography by Anthony Glyn (her grandson).

Elinor Glyn: A Portrait of the Woman Who Gave IT a new meaning — and of the fabulous world in which she lived  originally appeared in the Orlando Sentinel, July 17, 1955:

Elinor Glyn is the writer who made the word IT synonymous with sex appeal. That was ’s idea, though Mrs. Glyn had a much more involved definition.

Glyn was a legend in her own time. Born on the Isle of Jersey (UK), she died a few weeks before her seventy-ninth birthday.

 

Marriage, affairs, and good living

She was a young woman in the reign of Queen Victoria, a welcome guest at the house parties at the fabulous estates during the high-living Edwardian era. The object of these festivities was good living, good food, good company, exclusive society, sport, and discreet philandering.

Elinor, a slim, queenly, green-eyed red-haired beauty, had fastidiously refrained from love affairs, for she was determined to make an advantageous marriage. At the age of twenty-eight, in April 1892, at a fashionable wedding at St. George’s, Hanover Square, she married Clayton Glyn, “The most perfect grand seigneur that I have ever met.”

Clayton Glyn was a descendant of Sir Richard Carr Glyn, banker and Lord Mayor of London. he had no business interests and lived the life of a wealthy country gentleman. He was a fine sportsman, a connoisseur of food and wine, a great traveler, and absolutely irresponsible about money. He had a dry, caustic sense of humor.

Elinor’s beauty enchanted him and her pretensions and romantic silliness amused him for a time. Although they soon became indifferent to each other, they remained married until his death in 1915.

She consoled herself with other love affairs, the most famous being her eight-year romance with Lord Curzon. He evidently tired of her possessiveness and probably to avoid the dramatic scene of which he knew she was capable, let her read of his coming marriage to another woman without any advance preparation.

Elinor Glyn was an intimate of famous statesmen as well as of the nobility of Great Britain and the continent. She was a celebrated hostess and a war correspondent at the front in World War I.

A darling of the Jazz Age, she was a contradictory creature. Having inherited from her indomitable grandmother (the daughter of an Irish peer set down in the Canadian wilderness) an intense regard for the importance of aristocratic lineage.

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Hollywood of the 1920s and beyond

Glyn was a dazzling figure in Hollywood of the twenties. She could yet have a wonderful time among her something less than aristocratic colleagues in the movie business — Charlie Chaplin, Clara Bow, Sam Goldwyn, Gloria Swanson, William Randolph Hearst, Marion Davies, Aileen Pringle, Rudolph Valentino, and others.

When she learned that her husband’s considerable fortune was gone, she could turn out bestsellers, articles, and short stories by the dozen. Even when almost destitute, her normal entourage consisted of a personal maid and chauffeur.

She rented or bought big houses in England, France, and the U.S., decorating them with her favorite color, purple. Willfully uneducated, except in the classics, she consorted with some of the brainiest men of the era.

Bestsellers that were pure tripe

Glyn’s writings were purest tripe, erotic and as fruitfully purple as her favorite color scheme. Yet Three Weeks sold five million copies and many of her other books were also bestsellers.

Remember when Paul, the titled Englishman in Three Weeks, is enchanted by the mysterious royal stranger at a hotel in lucern, is invited to her rooms, and in a dizzy perfume of tuberoses, lilies of the valley, and roses, roses, roses, falls madly in love?

His queen reclines on a couch covered with a tiger skin. (Elinor Glyn liked tiger skins. She received five as gifts, one from Lord Curson and one from Lord Milner.)

“Then a madness of tender caressing seized her. She purred as a tiger might have done, while she undulated like a snake. She touched him with her fingertips, she kissed his throat, his wrists, the palms of his hands, his eyelids, his hair. Strange subtle kisses, unlike the kisses of women. And often, between her purring she murmured love-words in some fierce language of her own, brushing his ears and his eyes with her lips the while.”

Literally thousand of people, including American men and women, wrote Glyn for advice on love. She found that even Rudolph Valentino had a lot to learn in the art of making love convincingly before a camera.

“Do you know,” she would murmur, “he had never even thought of kissing the palm, rather than the back of a women’s hand, until I made him do it.”

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Vain, willful, courageous, spirited

Glyn was a beautiful woman until the day she died. She worked at it. Two of her startling aids to beauty: To scrub the face hard with a dry nailbrush until the skin glowed crimson (Not recommended!), and to sleep with one’s head to the magnetic north (pure common sense, she said).

She was always impeccably, fashionably gowned in clothes designed by her sister Lucile, Lady Duff-Gordon.

Glyn earned a great deal of money, and she spent it recklessly. One of her sons-in-law, Sir Rys-Williams, finally organized a limited liability company to hold copyrights of all her works and receive all royalties, so that she would be protected from her own wild investments and lavish spending.

Anthony Glyn wrote his biography of his grandmother “as objectively as possible, consistent with the demands of filial piety,” using material from Elinor’s published and unpublished books, articles, film scripts, the intimate diary that she kept intermittently from 1879 to 1942, her journals, notebooks, recollections of her family, friends, and business associates, press clippings, and hundreds of her own inimitable letters.

Vain, willful, romantic, and snobbish, Elinor Glyn also was quite resourceful, full of courage, pride, energy, and spirit. The world bought her awful love stories and rolled in their eroticism like catnip. The life story of this woman is delightful and fascinating.

(reviewed by Ruth Smith, July 17, 1955)

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Snakes and Ladders: Glimpses of Modern India by Gita Mehta

Gita Mehta (1943 – 2023) started her career in journalism, writing articles for Indian, European and American publications. She also filmed documentaries for British and American television before publishing her work in book form. This review presents Snakes and Ladders, a compilation of essays released to celebrate fifty years of Indian Independence. 

Reading Snakes and Ladders: Glimpses of Modern India (1997) with the country having recently completed seventy years of Independence offers great insights.

It could almost be termed a “Ready Reckoner” for what India was twenty-five years ago and quite often, while reading it, I found  myself wondering about what has changed.

Every page in the book carries something of import and a serious reader will find herself marking lines that she will want to go back to. I intend to use the reviewer’s privilege to opt out of a chronological interpretation of the chapters and focus on what held me in thrall. 

 

The land of experience

In the chapter “Getting There,” the author devotes a lot of space to quoting from my favorite satirist, Mark Twain, on his visit to India. Some of his observations seem almost eternal:

“The country of a hundred nations and a hundred tongues, of a thousand religions and two million gods, cradle of the human race, birthplace of human speech, mother of history, grandmother of legend, great-grandmother of tradition, whose yesterdays bear date with smoldering antiquities of the rest of the nations … the one land all men desire to see, and having seen once, by even a glimpse, would not give that glimpse for the shows of all the rest of the globe combined.” 

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More about Gita Mehta
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Mehta goes on to explain that India is known as the Karma Bhoomi, or the land of experience. What comes through is that the country defies any definition and, “in a world of perpetual motion, India remains a perpetual becoming, a vast and protean sea of human improvisations on the great dance of time.”

Though Mehta has quoted Mark Twain’s impressions about India, she does not mince words about the limitations of writers like E.M. Forster and Rudyard Kipling who wrote through the “British prism” with a male bias that in her mind provided “an inaccurate picture.”

Early in the chapter titled “Reading,” Mehta writes, “Learning to read in India meant hearing its pleasures shouted at you by pavement booksellers before you even know how to read.” 

The chapter delves into detail about how the world of imagination opens up to a child as much from the books that are read to her, before she learns to read, as also from the tales of valor narrated in the epic oral tradition of India, by elders at home and even domestic help. 

Sometimes, these stories are improvised upon, to coax food into the mouths of toddlers.  Ironically, when the act of reading becomes a pleasure, it begins to be frowned upon by adults who look upon it as a misdemeanor, when you can’t hear them calling out to you. 

This I found so familiar with my mother’s words ringing in my ears: “I called you thrice for dinner. What happens to your hearing, when your nose is buried in a book?!” 

The chapter goes on to speak of mobile libraries, which are nothing but “garishly painted tin trunks small enough to be strapped onto the backs of bicycles ridden by librarians, who were usually clerks moonlighting from government offices.” 

Needless to say, their locations were only learned through word of mouth, as was the author’s favorite spot, which consisted of three rungs of a wrought-iron fire escape behind an Emporium in Calcutta. The eclectic books on offer had much to do with the librarian’s ability to procure them, which, in the words of the author:

“… meant that we were uninhibited by literary snobbisms, holding an unshakeable belief that any book we borrowed was a potential source of delight and — more important — that there did not exist the book too difficult to read.”

 

A ringside view of history

Born before Independence, Mehta had a ringside view of history, as her father, Biju Patnaik, was involved in the freedom movement and later went on to become Chief Minister of the state of Orissa, in free India. Interestingly, her brother Naveen Patnaik is presently holding the same position in this state located in Eastern India.

In the chapter “Freedom’s Song,” the author describes how, after her revolutionary grandmother insisted that she be named Joan of Arc, the name Gita (which means “song” in many Indian languages) was chosen, in hopes that India would soon have a Song of Freedom. 

That was optimistic, because it would be several more years before the Indian flag would be unfurled, replacing the Union Jack. 

Within a few months of her birth, Mehta’s father was arrested for possession of weapons. Her father whispers to her mother about getting rid of some pistols that he is helping to hide. 

Mehta’s mother wisely does so by wrapping them and the rounds of ammunition in pillowcases and throwing them in a ditch some distance away from their home. Accomplished under cover of darkness, she realizes only the next day that she has decanted the pistols outside the walled compound of the Chief Inspector of the Police. 

Mehta comments drily, “Even in that moment of high melodrama, my mother, with the miserliness of the good housewife had been careful not to use her monogrammed linen,” thereby saving her husband from a terrible imprisonment in the dreaded penal colony of Kala Pani, or Black Water, in the distant islands of the Andamans.

 

Personal, political, and cultural glimpses

Mehta’s personal glimpses of her father “modernizing” her mother make for delightful reading. He taught her ballroom dancing, then how to play bridge, and finally “put her on a bicycle, pushed it until she pedaled well enough to retain her balance, and deserted her.” 

It resulted in the poor lady having to cycle halfway around the city of Delhi before she had the courage to brake and dismount.

The chapters of Snakes and Ladders are filled with the personal interspersed with political, cultural, and sociological observations about a country of contradictions. The author is unsparing in her assessment of many of the leaders of the country, and what she writes about some of them makes one wonder whether she was prescient. 

It would be most suitable to conclude this piece with a reference to the last chapter, “Leisure Activity.” Mehta refers to the word firdauz, which in Urdu means “divine leisure.” The word indicates the creation of something so unique that God could only craft when he had nothing else on his mind. 

In conclusion, Gita Mehta embarks on a long, captivating, and almost lyrical description of India starting with, “The smell of the Indian evening …” and ending with “the assault on the senses /the caress on the senses. Surely God made India at his leisure. “

Contributed by Melanie P. Kumar: Melanie is a Bangalore, India-based independent writer who has always been fascinated with the magic of words. Links to some of her pieces can be found at gonewiththewindwithmelanie.wordpress.com.

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The Banning of Nadine Gordimer’s Anti-Apartheid Novels

Nadine Gordimer (1923 – 2013) was a South African activist and Nobel Prize-winning author. Presented here is an overview of the banning of Nadine Gordimer’s anti-apartheid novels and other writings, and her legacy as one of the most prominent and outspoken authors of the anti-apartheid movement.

Gordimer was born in Springs, South Africa to Jewish immigrant parents. Her early experiences informed the rest of her life, including witnessing a raid on her family home where a servant’s letters and diaries were confiscated.

Her first novel, The Lying Days, was published in 1953 when apartheid-era censorship by the South African government was at its height.

 

The Publications Act

According to UCT News, between 1950 and 1990, a total of 26,000 books were banned under the Publications Act of 1974. Governmental bans affected theatre performances, films, television, and books. This reverberated through arts and communication.

Even internationally famous musicals like Hair and Jesus Christ Superstar were banned for reasons of supposed blasphemy. The book Black Beauty was banned merely for including the word “black” on the title page.

After publishing The Lying Days in 1953, Gordimer befriended activists like Bettie du Toit. She cited du Toit’s intentional arrest during a protest action as one of her early inspirations.

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Learn more about Nadine Gordimer
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Gordimer’s first official ban under the Publications Act  law was The Late Bourgeois World, published and banned in 1966. Times Live mentions other books that were banned that year, including Miriam Tlali’s Between Two Worlds (1975) and Es’kia Mphahlele’s Down Second Avenue (1959).

Banned books were completely barred from being read, and couldn’t be sold or shared. If anyone was caught with a banned text, they would be severely punished.

The government ban stretched internationally, and effecting books like The Satanic Bible by Anton LaVey (1969), and other texts that could be seen as anti-religious or against the political views of the time. Even musical artists like Pink Floyd became contraband for being seen as too anti-establishment for local ears.

Renowned poet Ingrid Jonker’s father, Abraham, was one of the prominent National Party figures responsible for banning laws of the time. Abraham headed the censorship commission and had his own staunch opinions on Ingrid’s work. He possibly had his own bias against Gordimer’s writing as well.

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Burger’s Daughter: banned and unbanned

Burger’s Daughter was the second of Gordimer’s works to be banned by the South African apartheid government. The book was partially inspired by her friendship with anti-apartheid lawyers and friends of Nelson Mandela.

In 1979, the book was published and simultaneously banned by the apartheid government’s censorship committee. According to a QZ feature, South Africa’s government of that time would proceed to burn many books in the face of bans, too.

The New York Times reported the book’s ban being canceled in October of the same year: The Government Publications Appeal Board decreed that the book was “inflammatory” rather than harmful and the ban was lifted.

 

1980: What Happened to Burger’s Daughter

Gordimer couldn’t forget or forgive  the government’s stance against her work. In 1980, she published a collection of essays recounting the book’s ban the prior year.

What Happened to Burger’s Daughter (or How South African Censorship Works) is a collection of essays by Gordimer and others.

The text explored the reasons for the apartheid-era ban against her work, and the greater impact this might have had on her writing. In this work, she examines the unfairness of governmental literature bans, and why her work (and others) were banned for no good reasons.

The book’s second chapter, written by the head of the Publications Board, is called “Reasons for the Ban.”

Her next book to be subjected to bans was July’s People, published in 1981 before South Africa eased strict censorship laws. July’s People envisioned a future South Africa where apartheid was ended through a civil war — a concept that the government deemed too dangerous to exist in print.

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South African bans against other arts

In 1984, musicians including Queen protested governmental censorship laws by performing at the Super Bowl in Sun City (located in what was then called Bophuthatswana). Many South Africans traveled to attend, going against laws that didn’t allow them to see the performance (or know the music).

The government’s stance on censorship also affected other arts. Cabaret artist Amanda Strydom famously used the Black Power salute on stage in 1986 during a concert, to the immediate displeasure of the government.

Gordimer continued to write on contentious topics. A Sport of Nature (1987) explored the story of a girl who changes her name to Hillela and subsequently joins the African National Congress (ANC) to marry a member.

 

Nadine Gordimer’s book bans lifted

Gordimer’s Nobel speech in 1991 mentions A Sport of Nature as a “most hazardous undertaking” under active literature bans.

Laws were revised after 1994, including the Films and Publications Act (65 of 1994), which lifted prior prohibitions on what South Africans were allowed to read and see. Modern censorship laws in Southern Africa are focused on responsible content regulation.

At the time of her death, all of Nadine Gordimer’ books had been unbanned and are available for anyone to read.

Contributed by Alex J. Coyne, a journalist, author. and proofreader. He has written for a variety of publications and websites, with a radar calibrated for gothic, gonzo and the weird. His features, posts, articles and interviews have been published in People Magazine, ATKV Taalgenoot, LitNet, The Citizen, Funds for Writers, and The South African, among other publications.

More about Nadine Gordimer

SA History: Nadine Gordimer Britannica: Nadine Gordimer The Guardian: Obituary for Nadine Gordimer Nobel Prize: Nadine Gordimer, 1991

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Enid Blyton, Prolific & Controversial Children’s Book Author

Enid Blyton (August 11, 1897 – November 28, 1968) was a prolific British writer of children’s stories. Her most famous books include The Famous Five  and Secret Seven series, The Faraway Tree, and the Noddy books.

She is believed to have written around seven hundred books altogether, along with hundreds of short stories, magazine articles, and poems.

Her work is controversial for its often dated and sometimes offensive views, yet decades after her death she remains one of the most popular children’s authors in the world.

 

Early life and education

Enid Mary Blyton was born in East Dulwich, London. She had two younger brothers, Hanly and Carey

Her father, Thomas, was a clothing wholesaler. She had a close and loving relationship with him, sharing his love of the outdoors, the theatre, art, music, and literature. In her 1952 autobiography, The Story of My Life, she describes her father’s willingness to take her for walks, writing that they were:

“… marvelous to me. It’s the very best way of learning about nature if you can go for walks with someone who really knows,” and recalled these times as “the happiest times, when looking back it seems the days were always warm and sunny and the skies were deeply blue.”

Her mother, Theresa, was a housewife. Enid’s relationship with her was more difficult, partly because her mother didn’t share the love of art and the outdoors and resented how Thomas encouraged Enid to spend time on these pursuits. Instead, she expected Enid to help with housework.

Shortly after Enid was born, the family moved to Beckenham in Kent. It was here that Enid went to school, initially to a small school run by two sisters in a house called Tresco, and then later to St. Christopher’s School for Girls, where she was Head Girl in her final two years. She was, by all accounts, bright and popular, and excelled at art and literature.

Despite her warm relationship with her father, Enid’s home life, wasn’t so happy. Her parents’ marriage was full of anger and frustration. When Enid was not quite thirteen her father announced that he was leaving. He moved out and took up residence with another woman, Florence Agnes Delattre.

Since separation and divorce were considered scandalous at the time, especially in the conventional English Kent countryside, Theresa forced Enid and her brothers to pretend that their father was simply away for a short while. This pretense, which the family kept up for years, had a lasting effect on Enid, who took her father’s departure as a rejection of her personally.

With the atmosphere at home strained, she spent more and more time writing in her room. Her mother despaired of her efforts at writing, which were rarely published and which she deemed a waste of time.

 

Teaching, and a writer’s beginnings

It was assumed Enid would attend music college and become a professional musician like her aunt (her father’s sister, May Crossland). However, feeling that her talents lay in writing, she determined to train as a teacher instead, where she would be in constant contact with children — her future audience of readers.

In September 1916, she enrolled in a teacher training course at Ipswich High School. It was around this time that she broke ties completely with her mother, spending holidays with friends rather than returning home. Although she kept in touch with her father, she was never able to accept his new family, and they were never as close as they once were.

After completing her teacher training in December 1918, Enid taught for a year at a boys’ school in Kent before becoming a governess to four young boys in Surbiton, Surrey. She remained there for four years, and later said it was “one of the happiest times of my life” despite the death of her father in 1920 from a stroke.

By the early 1920s, Enid was also beginning to have some success with her writing. Stories and articles were accepted for publication in various magazines, and she also wrote verses for greeting cards. By 1923 she had written and published more than a hundred stories, reviews, and poems.

 

Marriage and family life

On August 28, 1924, Enid married Hugh Alexander Pollock, an editor at the publishing company George Newnes. The wedding took place at Bromley Register Office, with neither Enid’s family nor Hugh’s family in attendance.

The couple honeymooned in Jersey. Later, Enid would base Kirrin Island (one of the places in the Famous Five series) on this island experience.

The early years of the marriage were happy and serene, spent mostly at Elfin Cottage in Beckenham. Hugh was supportive of Enid’s work and instrumental in publishing her stories at Newnes. In 1927, he also persuaded her to begin using a typewriter; before that, she had written all her stories in longhand.

In 1929 they moved to Old Thatch, a 16th-century thatched cottage in Bourne End, Buckinghamshire, very close to the River Thames. Enid described it as “a house in a fairy tale” and with the large gardens was able to indulge her passion for pets (which she had never been allowed as a child). At various times there were dogs, cats, hedgehogs, goldfish, pigeons, hens, and ducks roaming around the grounds.

In July 1931, the couple had a daughter, Gillian. After a miscarriage in 1934, a second daughter, Imogen, was born in October 1935.

Neither Enid nor Hugh spent much time with the children. Enid was busy with her writing and relied on domestic help for things like gardening, childcare, and cooking. Hugh had been working with Winston Churchill on his writings about World War I. He increasingly fell into depression as he realized how close the world was to entering another war.

Hugh began to drink, doing so while hiding in a cupboard underneath the stairs, and Enid retreated ever further into her writing. Her only real friend and confidante was Dorothy Richards, a maternity nurse who had helped with Imogen’s birth.

In August 1938, perhaps thinking that a move would help to give the family a chance, Enid bought a new house in Beaconsfield, Buckinghamshire — a much larger, newer eight-bedroom house, designed in a mockTudor style, which she called Green Hedges.

 

Second marriage

During the war years, Enid continued to write, while Hugh rejoined his old regiment, the Royal Scots Fusiliers, and was sent to Dorking in Surrey to train new officers. The separation put another strain on the marriage. While on holiday with Dorothy in Devon in 1941, Enid met Kenneth Waters, a surgeon.

In 1942, she and Hugh were divorced, and she married Kenneth in the City of Westminster Register Office in October 1943. Although she had promised that Hugh would be able to see his two daughters after the divorce, she went back on her word inexplicably, and the two girls never saw their father again.

In The Story of My Life, photographs of the family include Enid, Kenneth, Gillian, and Imogen. There is no mention of Hugh at all — as if he’d never existed.

Enid and Kenneth were largely happy together, but later, Enid’s daughters would each have very different recollections of their childhood and their mother.

In an interview with the author Gyles Brandreth, Gillian said that Enid could “communicate with children in a quite remarkable way… She was a fair and loving mother and a fascinating companion.”

Imogen, on the other hand, while acknowledging that “what [Enid] did as a writer was brilliant,” remembered her mother as “arrogant, insecure, pretentious, very skilled at putting difficult or unpleasant things out of her mind, and without a trace of maternal instinct.”

The family spent most of their holidays in Dorset, where they bought a farm in the 1950s, Manor Farm in Stourton Caundle. This setting provided much of the inspiration for the Famous Five books later on.

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Making a successful career

In the late 1920s and early 1930s, Enid worked mostly on educational books. She began writing and editing a fortnightly magazine, Sunny Stories for Little Folks and published her first full-length novel, The Enid Blyton Book of Bunnies (later renamed The Adventures of Binkle and Flip) in 1925.

By the 1940s she had given up much of her magazine writing and was concentrating on books. Her first full-length novel for children, The Secret Island, was published in 1938 and became the start of a series.

While her daughters were at boarding school, she began most of what would become her most famous series of books, such as The Famous Five books, the Adventure series, the St Clare’s series, the Faraway Tree, and the Wishing Chair series.

Later, these would be joined by the Secret Seven series, Malory Towers, and the Six Cousins books. Often Enid would publish up to twenty books in a single year.

1949 saw the appearance of the first Noddy book, Noddy Goes to Toyland, about a little wooden boy and his companion, Big Ears. It was the first of at least two dozen books in the same series that was enormously popular during the 1950s, with an extensive range of spin-offs, comic strips, and merchandise.

In 1950, she established a company, Darrell Waters Ltd. (taking Kenneth’s middle and last names) to deal with the financial and business side of things. Her prolific output remained constant, and by 1955 she had published the fourteenth Famous Five novel (Five Have Plenty of Fun), the eighth book in the Adventure series (The River of Adventure), and the seventh Secret Seven novel (Secret Seven Win Through).

Enid intended her books and stories for a wide range of ages, children between the ages of two and fourteen. She wrote adventure and mystery stories, school stories, animal stories, fantasy, fairytales, and nursery stories. Altogether, it’s estimated that she wrote about 700 books for children and about 2,000 short stories, as well as poems and magazine articles.

In a letter to the psychologist Peter McKellar, Enid described her writing technique:

“I shut my eyes for a few minutes, with my portable typewriter on my knee — I make my mind a blank … and then, as clearly as I would see real children, my characters stand before me … The first sentence comes straight into my mind, I don’t have to think of it — I don’t have to think of anything.”

The sheer volume of writings that she produced led to rumors that she employed an army of ghostwriters, a charge that she vehemently denied and that she eventually took legal action on.

She believed her stories came from her “under-mind” as opposed to her conscious mind, although her daughter Gillian also said that it was important for Enid to give her young readers a “strong moral framework in which bravery and loyalty are (eventually) rewarded.

 

Charity work

In 1953 Enid launched an eponymous fortnightly magazine, Enid Blyton’s Magazine. She wrote all the contents herself, except for paid advertisements, and the magazine launched four clubs that readers could join: the Busy Bees (which raised money for the PDSA pet charity), the Famous Five club (which raised money for a children’s home), the Sunbeam Society (which helped blind children) and the Magazine Club (which helped children with cerebral palsy).

The magazine folded in 1959, but in those six years, the clubs had a total of around half a million members and had raised about £35,000 (almost £1.5 million today).

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When the Present Clashes with the Past:
Reminiscences of Enid Blyton
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Controversy and criticism

Despite Enid’s popularity, she was not without her critics. Many teachers and parents (along with literary critics) were dismissive of her work even at the time it was published, saying that it didn’t challenge young readers enough and that its literary merit was limited.

Later, particularly in the late 1950s and early 1960s, when a more progressive society was beginning to emerge, her books were also criticized for being elitist, sexist, racist, and xenophobic. They were banned by many libraries and schools that removed them from shelves.  The children’s book critic Margery Fisher likened Enid’s books to “slow poison.”

These accusations have grown over the years. According to the academic Nicholas Tucker, Enid’s works have been “banned from more public libraries over the years than is the case with any other adult or children’s author.”

From the 1930s until the 1950s, the BBC refused to broadcast her stories: Jean Sutcliffe of the BBC Schools Broadcast department wrote that Enid’s books were “mediocre material” that were churned out too fast, and that “her capacity to do so amounts to genius … anyone else would have died of boredom long ago.”

Not long ago, some revisions were made to modernize some of the language in Enid Blyton books, notably the Famous Five series. These revisions proved to be a flop, and the original language was restoreed. 

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Final years

By the time that Enid Blyton’s Magazine ended, she was writing less and spending more time with Kenneth, who had retired as a surgeon in 1957. He suffered from arthritis, and the medicine he took damaged his kidneys. He died in 1967, while Enid herself was struggling with poor physical health. She had experienced bouts of breathlessness, had suffered a heart attack, and descended into dementia.

Enid continued to live at Green Hedges, cared for by staff, until this was no longer possible. She was transferred to a Hampstead nursing home in the summer of 1968. She died in her sleep on November 28, 1968, and was cremated at Golders Green in North London.

Her home, Green Hedges, was demolished in 1973, and the street of houses built on the site is called Blyton Close. In 2014, a plaque commemorating her time living in Beaconsfield was unveiled in the town hall gardens, along with small statues of Noddy and Big Ears.

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Enid Blyton’s legacy

The majority of Enid’s books are still in print, with sales of more than 500 million copies. Her works have been translated into some ninety languages.

Several of her series have been continued by other authors, and some have been successfully adapted for television, film, and the stage, including Malory Towers, The Famous Five, Noddy, and The Faraway Tree.

Her life was itself the subject of a BBC film, broadcast in 2009, starring in the title role.

However, many of her books have also been heavily edited in recent years to remove offensive terms about race, appearance, and class. The criticism that she faced at the time of publication is even stronger today.

In 2016, the Royal Mint blocked a proposal to honor Enid Blyton with a commemorative 50p coin owing to her reconsideration as a “racist, a sexist and a homophobe.” It’s a conflicting legacy for the writer who introduced — and continues to introduce — generations of children to the joys of reading.

Today, the bulk of Enid’s collection of manuscripts and papers is held by the Seven Stories National Centre for Children’s Books in Newcastle upon Tyne.

The Enid Blyton Society was formed in 1995. It issues the Enid Blyton Society Journal three times a year, holds an annual Enid Blyton Day, and has a comprehensive website which delves into the different series of books and includes forums and quizzes.

Contributed by Elodie Barnes. Elodie is a writer and editor with a serious case of wanderlust. Her short fiction has been widely published online and is included in the Best Small Fictions 2022 Anthology published by Sonder Press. She is Books & Creative Writing Editor at Lucy Writers Platform, she is also co-facilitating What the Water Gave Us, an Arts Council England-funded anthology of emerging women writers from migrant backgrounds. She is currently working on a collection of short stories, and when not writing can usually be found planning the next trip abroad, or daydreaming her way back to 1920s Paris. Find her online at  Elodie Rose Barnes. 

More about Enid Blyton

 On this site

When the Present Clashes with the Past:
Reminiscences of Enid Blyton

Major works

Almost all of Enid Blyton’s books for children are still in print (although many have been edited from the original versions). See a complete bibliography here.

Biographies

Enid Blyton: The Biography by Barbara Stoney (2006)101 Amazing Facts About Enid Blyton by Jack Goldstein (2020)Enid Blyton: A Literary Life by Andrew Maunder (2021)The Real Enid Blyton by Nadia Cohen (2022)

Controversy

Why it’s Important to Note Enid Blyton’s Failings, Not Erase Her Work Enid Blyton Fans React to ‘Racist’ Label Enid Blyton: Heritage Bosses Respond to Racism, etc. English Heritage Has No Plans to Remove Plaque

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Nadine Gordimer, South African Author and Activist

Nadine Gordimer (November 20, 1923 – July 13, 2013) was a South African activist and Nobel Prize-winning author. Her short stories and long form fiction explored themes of alienation, apartheid, and exile in the context of South African people.

She published her first short story collection in 1949, and her first novel,The Lying Days, in 1953. Many of her works, including July’s People and Burger’s Daughter, were banned by the apartheid government at the time they were published.

In addition to the Nobel Prize for Literature, the Commonwealth Writer’s Prize, and countless other awards and honors, she cofounded the Congress of South African Writers (COSAW) and was a notable member of the African National Congress (ANC).

Her lifetime was devoted to political and social causes, including being a friend to many stalwarts of the anti-apartheid struggle in their time of need.

 

Early life and literary beginnings

Nadine Gordimer was born in 1923 in Springs, South Africa, a small mining town that’s about thirty miles from Johannesburg, Gauteng. She was the daughter of Jewish immigrants Isidore Gordimer (from Latvia) and Nan Myers (from the United Kingdom).

A privileged upbringing gave her secure foundation, and she began writing from the age of nine. By 1937, she was a published teenage author in the Sunday Express.

She went to school at the Convent of Our Lady of Mercy in Springs between ages eleven and sixteen. She was later removed from the school, and went to live with family.

She enrolled for college studies at the University of Witwatersrand, but left after a year to pursue writing. Her stories continued running in South African newspapers and magazines.

 

First collection and debut novel

Gordimer’s first short story collection published in 1949 via now-defunct Johannesburg publisher Silver Leaf Books. The rare collection Face to Face explored how apartheid affected South Africans, setting the tone for much of Gordimer’s lifetime work.

Her next short story collection was published in 1952. Its eponymous story, The Soft Voice of the Serpent, tells of a man contemplating the loss of a limb while sitting in his garden.

Her debut novel, The Lying Days, appeared in 1953. The book draws from her life experiences; it takes place in a small town and is written from the perspective of a South African woman named Helen Shaw. The Lying Days is considered a coming-of-age novel, as the protagonist discovers life and truth outside her small hometown.

Gordimer’s work quickly caught public attention, dealing with themes like racial separation and crossing boundaries. Her work would soon also catch the South African government’s attention and became the object of frequent bannings.

 

Life after early publications

Gordimer was married to Gerald Gavronsky from 1949 to 1952. She married again in 1954, staying married to art dealer Reinhold Cassirer until his death in 2001. Famous in his own right, he established the South African branch of the auction house Sotheby’s, and would later run his own art gallery.

The New Yorker published Gordimer’s short story, A Watcher of the Dead, in 1951. She maintained this editorial relationship, writing several stories for The New Yorker during her career.

After friend Bettie du Toit’s arrest during a protest action, Gordimer became more involved in anti-apartheid causes and social activism. Gordimer joined the African National Congress (ANC) and continued to show support through her writing.

She was a friend to many anti-apartheid figures, including Nelson Mandela. In 1963 – 1964, she created biographical sketches for The Guardian of Nelson Mandela and his co-accused at the famous Rivonia Trial. Gordimer also assisted Mandela in writing his famous “I Am Prepared to Die” speech.

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Banned and continuing to write

Gordimer published The Late Bourgeois World in 1966.  It was the first of her books to be banned under government censorship. Touching on sensitive topics, it was written from the perspective of a pompous South African white woman.

More of her work written during the apartheid era was the object of bans by the government, notably July’s People and Burger’s Daughter. This intentionally created a difficult  environment for politically inclined writers of the time.

In the 1960s to 1970s, Gordimer spent time away from Southern Africa teaching in United States schools. Gordimer went back to South Africa after this period, returning to write.

In 1961, she received the W.H. Smith Commonwealth Literary Award for her work.

 

From City Lovers to BBC’s Frontiers

Gordimer’s story, City Lovers, was published in The New Yorker in 1975.  The story later became a 1982 film starring Joe Stewardson and Denise Newman in the lead roles.

The famously banned novel Burger’s Daughter was published in 1979. She wrote the book as a coded tribute to a friend who had been one of Nelson Mandela’s attorneys during the Rivonia Trial. She would later write an essay about the book’s banning, “What Happened to Burger’s Daughter.”

In 1989, Gordimer contributed an episode (Gold and the Gun) to Frontiers, a BBC show also featuring authors John Wells and Frederic Raphael. The show coincided with the fall of the Berlin Wall, a highly political time.

When Nelson Mandela was released from prison just a year later in 1990, he asked for Gordimer to be one of the first people he wanted to see.

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Post-apartheid writings

Her post-apartheid work centered around themes of an evolving political landscape, such as that of guns, their impact, and the legal implications. The House Gun (1998) explored the topic of “house guns” as commonplace as “house cats” in the country at the time.

Gordimer would continue to be one of the most prolific, politically-charged fiction writers of the age. Her work won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1991, adding to her repetoire of writing awards.

A novel exploring alienation and human relationships called The Pickup appeared in 2001. This time, she explored a romance between the characters Julie and Abdu. When Abdu isn’t allowed to stay in South Africa, Julie joins him as an outsider in his country with little context for its new culture and customs.

Telling Tales (2003) is a result of Gordimer’s activism, collecting her own stories along with other Nobel winners and authors into one volume. Proceeds from the book were donated to HIV/AIDS-related causes. During this time, she was especially critical of President Thabo Mbeki’s public stance on the disease.

Get a Life (2005) tells the story of an anti-nuclear activist protesting against a nuclear plant in his town. This is contrasted with his personal life, while the character receives chemotherapy cancer treatment, which gives rise to mixed feelings about its impact.

An unauthorized biography of Gordimer was published against her wishes in 2006. While No Cold Kitchen had her cooperation at first, she later claimed that the author breached her trust for the purpose of writing the book. Later that year, Gordimer left South Africa to lecture at the University of Toronto.

Beethoven was one-sixteenth black (2007) was her next story collection, followed by her last novel No Time Like the Present (2012). The latter revisits a racially mixed romance set in post-apartheid South Africa.

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Gordimer in 2019 (photo: Wikimedia Commons)
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Death & Legacy

In addition to receiving the Nobel Prize for Literature, Gordimer was bestowed the French Legion of Honor award in 2007 for her contributions to literature. Her awards and honors are too numerous to list here; get a full picture here.

Nadine Gordimer died at age ninety in 2013, reportedly in her sleep at her home in Johannesburg. Her legacy as literary stalwart is well regarded, with much of her work recorded in the South African National Archives.

The Nadine Gordimer Short Story Award is named in her memory, and makes up the greater South African Literary Awards. Her 92nd birthday was posthumously celebrated with a Google Doodle.

Contributed by Alex J. Coyne, a journalist, author, and proofreader. He has written for a variety of publications and websites, with a radar calibrated for gothic, gonzo and the weird. His features, posts, articles and interviews have been published in People Magazine, ATKV Taalgenoot, LitNet, The Citizen, Funds for Writers, and The South African, among other publications.

More about Nadine Gordimer

Novels

The Lying Days (1953)A World of Strangers (1958)Occasion for Loving (1963)The Late Bourgeois World (1966)A Guest of Honour (1970)The Conservationist (1974)Burger’s Daughter (1979)July’s People (1981)A Sport of Nature (1987)My Son’s Story (1990)None to Accompany Me (1994)The House Gun (1998)The Pickup (2001)Get a Life (2005)No Time Like the Present (2012)

Other works

In addition to the novels listed above, Nadine Gordimer published numerous collections of short stories, essays. See a nearly complete bibliography here.

More information and sources

 SA History Britannica National Archives (SA Government) Nobel Prize (1991: Literature) New World Encyclopedia

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Music in the Street by Vera Caspary (1929)

Music in the Street (1929) was one of three novels by Vera Caspary, a remarkably prolific American novelist, playwright, and screenwriter all released in the same year, along withThe White Girl  and Ladies and Gents.

This analysis of Music in the Street by Vera Caspary is excerpted from A Girl Named Vera Can Never Tell a Lie: The Fiction of Vera Caspary by Francis Booth ©2022. Reprinted by permission.

Mae Thorpe moves away from her small-town family into a working girls’ home in Chicago, where at first, she is one of the unpopular girls with no boyfriend who stays home on a Saturday night.

Mae finds a man, though he is by no means the kind of boy the popular girls would envy: Olyn is an artist, an intellectual, shy, socially awkward, and worst of all, poor and living at the YMCA.

“While Olyn was regarded suspiciously by the more hilarious because he neither smoked nor drank, he was accepted as Mae’s boyfriend. The girls teased her about him, made fun of his large collars and long neck, mocked his slow, serious manner of speaking, but they expected Mae to marry him.”

Still, despite Olyn taking her to the Art Institute of Chicago and other places her housemates would sneer at, when the phone rings at Rolfe House and her name is called, Mae feels as though she has finally made it.

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Learn more about Vera Caspary
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“Mae stepped forward with an air of importance. She was being called by her boyfriend and she had a large audience.” And when they go out together, Mae feels she has become part of the life of the city at last.

She was happy. She was a color in the spectrum, a figure in the parade. The lights winked merrily as if they knew how wonderful it was to be a girl going somewhere in the city with her boyfriend.

Mae hears music in the street. But the relationship has difficulty progressing. Since both of them live in hostels, there is no chance for them to be alone, no privacy anywhere. It is a long time before they even kiss.

After much argument she allowed him to press his eager timid lips against her lips while he breathed heavily through distended nostrils to show his rapture.

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A Girl Named Vera Can Never Tell a Lie is available on
 Amazon (US) and Amazon (UK)
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But then someone far more romantic comes along – Boyd Wheeler, a salesman. He has been coming into the drugstore where Mae works on a regular basis and she has always liked him, but never had the courage to talk to him. Eventually one of her friends from Rolfe House introduces them. He takes her out – to a theatre and a restaurant rather than an art gallery. Boyd wastes no time, even though this is the first date.

In the taxicab he kissed her. She knew it would have been better if she turned her head away. She knew it was not right for him to kiss her so fervently the first time he took her out. But with his lips hard against her lips, with his cheek brushing her cheek with its burning masculine roughness, she had no strength for resisting. He was an insolent lover and she was happy.

Boyd is clearly not going to give up until he gets his way, and eventually he does. After only a few more dates, he takes her to a seedy hotel. Mae cannot have any doubt about what is inevitably going to happen when she gets there, “but her body stiffened and she held him at a distance. She was frightened.”

Mae still doesn’t run away. Here is Caspary’s bleak description of a young single virgin giving herself to a man before marriage at the end of the 1920s.

      There was a crack in the wallpaper. She stared at it as if she were fascinated by the thin jagged line of the crack. The room vanished. All she could see was the wallpaper with its faded flowers and the ugly brown crack. Minutes passed. Years passed.
      Boyd moved. The bed spring creaked.
      Mae turned her head. She saw Boyd sitting there fingering the knot in his brown tie. Like a person who has been unconscious she was suddenly aware of the room around her and the iron bed and Boyd’s raccoon coat hung carefully on the costumer. She looked intently at her lover. She saw his short nose and his proud crest of curly hair.
      “You’ve got naturally curly hair,” she heard her voice saying. “I love naturally curly hair.” Then Boyd took her in his arms and she was afraid no longer.

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See also: Laura by Vera Caspary
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Contributed by Francis Booth, the author of several books on twentieth-century culture:

Amongst Those Left: The British Experimental Novel 1940-1960 (published by Dalkey Archive); Everybody I Can Think of Ever: Meetings That Made the Avant-Garde; Girls in Bloom: Coming of Age in the Mid-Twentieth Century Woman’s Novel; Text Acts: Twentieth-Century Literary Eroticism; and Comrades in Art: Revolutionary Art in America 1926-1938; High Collars & Monocles: 1920s Novels by British Female Couples.

Francis has also published several novels: The Code 17 series, set in the Swinging London of the 1960s and featuring aristocratic spy Lady Laura Summers; Young adult fantasy series The Watchers; and Young Adult fantasy novel Mirror Mirror. Francis lives on the South Coast of England. 

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More about Vera Caspary

The Secrets of Vera Caspary, the Woman Who Wrote Laura Jewish Women’s Archive Wikipedia Reader discussion on Goodreads Dolls and Dames — Laura by Vera Caspary The Broadcast 41

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