Description
Book SynopsisThis first biography of Pamela Hansford Johnson (1912-1981) has been written with the full co-operation of her three children, who allowed Wendy Pollard access to previously unexamined diaries, letters and much other material, illuminating their mother's eventful and often entertaining life. Pamela Hansford Johnson's achievements were all the more
Trade Review"PAMELA Hansford Johnson has found the perfect biographer and critic in Wendy Pollard, in a book bound to appeal to readers with an interest in the literary world of twentieth-century Britain, and in women's literary lives in particular. Fully and extensively researched, this intelligent study judiciously sets Hansford Johnson's life and considerable achievements in the context of her times. [It] is a readable and enjoyable book: Pollard writes with real knowledge, insight and balance, and a nice dry wit." Jenny Hartley, Professor of English Literature at the University of Roehampton // "MISS HANSFORD Johnson belongs to that group of writers - they are perhaps most to be envied - whose fame has climbed slowly on the wings of each new achievement. In the past ten years she has become well known to the reading public as a novelist of great craftsmanship and distinction and to readers of the weeklies as one of the best contemporary reviewers of novels in the language." Times Literary Supplement, 1959 // "PAMELA Hansford Johnson is a writer whose memory fully deserves to be kept alive, and she is well served by Wendy Pollard's admirable, sympathetic biography, which does justice both to her life and to her work." Jonathan Coe, award-winning novelist and biographer // "WENDY Pollard's absorbing, well-researched and sensitive biography shows the importance of London in the complex life and work of a writer who was quite popular and critically respected in her lifetime but has since fallen into relative and undeserved obscurity." The Literary London Journal. // "IT'S VERY readable and superbly well researched ... I certainly found Wendy pollard's portrayal of PHJ's life to be fascinating - I have only touched very briefly on it here - but it is testament to her biographer's skill, that I feel I really got to know PHJ. Wendy Pollard skilfully discusses each of PHJ's novels, without I am personally very happy to say, giving away any spoilers." From the blog Heavenali // "A REVALUATION [of Johnson' profile] is clearly required; Pollard's sympathetic, judicious and informed biography makes a major contribution to this, bringing Johnson out of [Dylan] Thomas's and [C.P.] Snow's long shadows." Nicolas Tredell, PN Review
Table of ContentsList of Illustrations; Introduction and Acknowledgments; 1 A Clapham Childhood; 2 Aut Inveniam Viam, Aut Faciam; 3 `My Darling Dylan’; 4 `A Remarkable English First Novel’; 5 Married Life amid the Clouds of War; 6 Surviving on the Home Front; 7 `Waving Flags on Top of a Huge Rubble-Heap’; 8 Chill Outside and Within; 9 The Dark and the Light; 10 `I Have Been Infinitely, Infinitely Enriched’; 11 `Divorce-Nausea’, `Wounded Pride’, finally `Wondrous Joy’; 12 A Fragile Start to a Second Marriage until the Arrival of `Borox’; 13 Second Exile from the City; 14 `“And Have You Ever Written, Lady Snow?”’; 15 East and West; 16 Attacks, Scandals and Distresses; 17 Pamela the Crusader, Part One; 18 Pamela the Crusader, Part Two; 19 `This World is in a Frightful State’; 20 `So End my Fifties…’; 21 `Why, This is HELL – Nor am I out of it’; 22 The Last Six Months; Afterword; Notes; Select Bibliography; Index
