Ivy Compton-Burnett (1884–1969)
Forfatter af A House and Its Head
Om forfatteren
Ivy Compton-Burnett was born in Pinner, Middlesex, England on June 5, 1884. She studied classics at Royal Holloway College, London University, where she graduated in 1906. After publishing her first novel, Dolores, in 1911 she went on to become a prolific writer. Her other works include Pastors and vis mere Masters, Brothers and Sisters, Men and Wives, The Mighty and Their Fall, More Women Than Men, A House and Its Head, Manservant and Maidservant, and Two Worlds and Their Ways. In 1956, she won the James-Tait Black Memorial Award for Fiction for Mother and Son. In 1967, she was made a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire. She died on August 27, 1969. (Bowker Author Biography) vis mindre
Image credit: Courtesy of The Ivy Compton-Burnett Home Page
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Almen Viden
- Kanonisk navn
- Compton-Burnett, Ivy
- Juridisk navn
- Compton-Burnett, Dame Ivy
- Fødselsdato
- 1884-06-05
- Dødsdag
- 1969-08-27
- Begravelsessted
- Cremated
- Køn
- female
- Nationalitet
- UK
- Fødested
- Pinner, Middlesex, England, UK
- Dødssted
- London, England, UK
- Bopæl
- Pinner, Middlesex, England, UK
Kensington, London, England, UK
Hove, Sussex, England, UK - Uddannelse
- Royal Holloway College, University of London
Addiscombe College, Hove
Howard College, Bedford - Erhverv
- novelist
- Relationer
- Compton-Burnett, James (father)
Jourdain, Margaret (companion) - Priser og hædersbevisninger
- Royal Society of Literature Companion of Literature
Order of the British Empire (Dame Commander) - Agent
- Caroline Dawnay (PFD)
- Kort biografi
- Ivy Compton-Burnett was born in the town of Pinner, now a suburb of London, the seventh of 12 children of an English homeopathic doctor. She grew up in the coastal town of Hove, Sussex, and attended Addiscombe College before reading classics at the University of London. After graduating in 1906, she returned home to help her widowed mother, said to be the model for some of the domestic tyrants in Ivy's fiction. In 1911, she published her debut novel, Dolores, the tale of a dutiful daughter at home, but afterwards disowned it. Her beloved younger brother Guy had died of pneumonia at the age of 20, and then a second brother, Noel, was killed in World War I. Four of Ivy's sisters rebelled against home life after their mother's death, and ran away together to London. Her two youngest sisters, Stephanie and Catharine, committed suicide together in 1917, after which Ivy herself fell severely ill in the influenza pandemic and suffered a prolonged mental and emotional collapse. However, she recovered and successfully managed the family trust as she began to write again. At age 35, she met Margaret Jourdain, who became her lifelong companion. In 1925, at age 41, Ivy published Pastors and Masters, the first of 19 novels written in her mature manner; the last one, A God and His Gifts, appeared in 1963. Ivy developed a distinct form of novel,
with a cool, dry, ironic tone, telling stories often through dialogue alone, focusing on personal relationships within stifling, middle-class Edwardian households such as the one in which she was raised. In 1955, she received the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for her novel Mother and Son. She was created Dame of the British Empire in 1967.
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- Værker
- 25
- Medlemmer
- 2,370
- Popularitet
- #10,835
- Vurdering
- 3.4
- Anmeldelser
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- ISBN
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- Sprog
- 7
- Udvalgt
- 13
As other reviewers have summarised, Horace Lamb is a dismissive, uncaring gentleman from an era long past, whose wife can't stand him, servants find unappealing (when they're not outright attempting to kill him), and whose children seem to have grown old before their time. (If I take nothing from this, it will be a desire to use such names as Avery, Tamasin, and Jasper for any future unlucky children I may sire!). Horace's turning point is discovering how everyone feels about him, leading to an attempted change of personality, juxtaposed with the minor antics of his extended household.
This is my first Compton-Burnett novel and it seems clear that plot, as such, is not at the top of her priority list. This is a conversational novel, and a stylised one at that. Writing between the wars (i.e. long after the Victorian and Edwardian eras she depicts), Compton-Burnett creates a highly artificial, ironic world in which prose and narrative voice are sparse, and dialogue must carry the day. From the housekeeper to the youngest child, everyone's speech is arch, poisonous, and proverbial. (A tone once described by Hal Prince, of his musical A Little Night Music as being "knives dipped in icing sugar".) It feels almost like the achievement of pointillist painting, where the eye makes the colours mingle; here, the reader must make the dialogue serve for all of the other parts of writing too. "Charlotte", says Horace at one point," I have not spoken to you of the thing that is between us. It may be that I shall not speak of it." Elsewhere, to quote the character of Gideon, "My feelings are not easy; they go deep like everything about me."
Everything both high and ironic, rather like the older way of translating the Greek tragedies.
This structure has clearly confused a range of readers here on Goodreads, who have decided that Ms Compton-Burnett can't have known what she was doing. "No-one speaks like that!" cries a popular refrain, which suggests these armchair critics have never read Austen or Dickens, Pynchon or Hardy, and yet have somehow progressed to this obscure novelist from the early 20th century.
It will surprise no-one to hear that this book is hard-going. I think Ms Compton-Burnett, whose personal history you should also look up, was hard-going in general. Yet I'm glad to have finally made my way through one of her volumes. This is a book that almost cries out to be read aloud, with the subtleties of dialogue somewhat lost over the generations but still an intriguing experiment if nothing else. Will you enjoy it? If you enjoy extreme stylisation and narrative playfulness, perhaps yes. In the NYRB Classics edition, Diane Johnson's introduction refers to Manservant and Maidservant as a "noir version" of the British drama series Upstairs, Downstairs. It's a deeply strange comparison but, I think, rather apt.… (mere)