Pamela Hansford Johnson : a writing life

Description

Deirdre David traces the successful writing life of Pamela Hansford Johnson (1912-1981) from the time of her childhood growing up in a theatrical household in South London to her death as the widow of the novelist and popular intellectual C. P. Snow. Forced to leave school at sixteen, she trained as a shorthand typist, worked for four years in the mid 1930 for a West End Bank, and conducted a tumultuous romance with the then 19-year old poet Dylan Thomas. Thomas having persuaded her she would become a better novelist than a poet she published a scandalous first novel in 1935 and went on to publish close to thirty more in her career. A passionate defender of the narrative traditions of the British novel, she contributed many essays and reviews on contemporary fiction to periodicals and newspapers; in her own fiction, in the nineteenth-century traditions of Jane Austen, George Eliot, and Charles Dickens, she focused on the domestic everyday, the moral questions facing a rapidly-changing society, and the challenges and pleasures of urban life. She was very much a novelist of the city, particularly London. She also gained praise and criticism for her writings about violence and pornography, especially in her well-known analysis of the notorious Moors murder trial. With C. P. Snow, she travelled many times to the United States and the Soviet Union and at the time of her death in 1981, she was still at work on her last novel. Hers was a rich, courageous, and politically committed writing life, and this biography restores Johnson's work to the critical distinction it received when it was published. Content: Cover Pamela Hansford Johnson: A WRITING LIFE Copyright Dedication Contents List of Figures List of Abbreviations Note on Naming Note on Editions Prologue: Becoming a Novelist Precious Dylan The Writing Life 1: The Rise Henry Irvingś Chandelier Riding Up Piccadilly Disgracing Clapham 2: Haunted by the Thirties A Deepening Twilight Remaining on the Left A Eulogy for Bruges 3: Writing With Every Nerve Laleham London The Slow-Waking World of England Troubled by the Flesh A Settling Place 4: Snow Frozen Balancing Guilt Learning from Proust 5: Breaking Free Venice Marrying CharlesA Long Way from Clapham Common `Oh, My Paddington! My Bethnal Green! ́ Reasserting Dickens `My Books Are My Children ́ 6: A Professional Novelist Seizing the Pen A Country of Her Own One Hand Out of the Fire The Road to `Skipton ́ 7: Abroad Travelling Writers Mrs Iago A Dotty Novel 8: Besieged Heaving Mightily at the Winch A Shrewd and Knavish Sprite Being Agnes Wickfield Murder-Haunted Crescents 9: Elegies Social Castration Dispersed Are We Not a Lady Novelist No Words for the Horror 10: The Halting Shadow Twelfth Night `Another Deft Lady Snow Job́ The SeasideLiving Now 11: The Orange Chair The Great Anodyne Husbands Guilt Notes PROLOGUE CHAPTER 1: THE RISE CHAPTER 2: HAUNTED BY THE THIRTIES CHAPTER 3: WRITING WITH EVERY NERVE CHAPTER 4: SNOW CHAPTER 5: BREAKING FREE CHAPTER 6: A PROFESSIONAL NOVELIST CHAPTER 7: ABROAD CHAPTER 8: BESIEGED CHAPTER 9: ELEGIES CHAPTER 10: THE HALTING SHADOW CHAPTER 11: THE ORANGE CHAIR Bibliography WORKS BY PAMELA HANSFORD JOHNSON Novels Plays Uncollected Short Stories Non-Fiction, Miscellaneous Recordings Other Works Acknowledgements Index