Letter from England

by Mollie Panter-Downes

A 259 page 1st Edition HARDBACK published by Little Brown and Company in 1949. A first hand account of England during World War Two.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, British Literature, World War II

259 pages, Hardcover

First published October 1, 1940

About the author

Mary Patricia "Mollie" Panter-Downes was a novelist and newspaper columnist for The New Yorker. Aged sixteen, she wrote The Shoreless Sea which became a bestseller; eight editions were published in 1923 and 1924, and the book was serialised in The Daily Mirror. Her second novel The Chase was published in 1925.

After her marriage to Aubrey Robinson in 1927, the couple moved to Surrey, and in 1938 Panter-Downes began writing for the New Yorker, first a series of short stories, and from September 1939, a column entitled Letter from London, which she wrote until 1984. The collected columns were later published as Letters from England (1940) and London War Notes (1972).

After visiting Ootacamund, in India, she wrote about the town, known to all as Ooty, in her New Yorker columns. This material was later published as Ooty preserved.

Mollie Panter-Downes died in Compton, Surrey, aged 90.

Selected works:

- The Shoreless Sea (1923)
- The Chase (1925)
- My Husband Simon (1931)
- One Fine Day (1947)
- Minnie's Room (Short stories collected between 1947–1965) Republished by Persephone Books in 2002.
- Good Evening, Mrs Craven (short stories collected between 1938–1944) Republished by Persephone Books in 1999.
- Ooty preserved: a Victorian hill station (1967).

Reviews

[Monique · Rating 2 out of 5]

Mollie Panter-Downes was the London correspondent for the New Yorker, writing a column called Letter from England from 1939-1984. Letter from England 1940 covers the period just before the second world war broke out and through 1940. The columns are informative, somewhat dispassionate, and more descriptive than evocative. The only topic is the war and Britons' response to the effects of the war on them; of course keeping a stiff upper lip throughout.I found it hard to get engaged with her topics as she seemed herself removed from her writing.

I compared it to Janet Flanner who was the Paris correspondent for the same magazine between 1925-1965 and wrote Paris was Yesterday 1925-1939, a collection of some of her columns. Flanner is witty, ironic and covers a broad range of topics. Her style is engaging and some of her perpsectives are just wacky enough to elicit a smile of pleasure at the endless foibles of humans.

All in all, I will pass on Mollie Panther-Downes.

[Frances Littell · Rating 4 out of 5]

Elegantly written essays about England in the first year of ww2.