Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
Pamela Hansford Johnson
-
Standard Name: Johnson, Pamela Hansford
Birth Name: Pamela Hansford Johnson
Pseudonym: Nap Lombard
Married Name: Pamela Hansford Snow
Titled: Baroness Snow
PHJ
had a long and prolific writing career, from before the second world war until late twentieth century. She is remembered primarily as a novelist (with twenty-seven titles),
Hadley, Tessa. “He wants me no more”. London Review of Books, Vol.
38
, No. 2, 21 Jan. 2016, pp. 29-30.
30
though she also wrote poetry, drama, memoirs, and political and social commentary.
Of this novel ICB
wrote, I have never had such superficial reviews.
qtd. in
Spurling, Hilary. Secrets of a Woman’s Heart. Hodder and Stoughton, 1984.
190
They did, however, praise the book, especially in the case of reviewers who were also novelists, like Elizabeth Bowen
, Pamela Hansford Johnson
Literary responses
Virginia Woolf
VW
had been ill while she was writing this book and was acutely anxious about its quality: she gave the manuscript to Leonard
to read with the brief of pronouncing whether or not it was...
Literary responses
Susan Hill
This book was widely praised. Pamela Hansford Johnson
in the Daily Telegraph made it her book selection of the year.
“Dictionary of Literary Biography online”. Gale Databases: Literature Resource Center-LRC.
14
Literary responses
Aldous Huxley
This text, wrote novelist Pamela Hansford Johnson
, opened miraculous doors for her and a whole group of her literary-minded young friends.
Johnson, Pamela Hansford. Important to Me. Macmillan; Scribner, 1974.
82
Occupation
John Donne
During the later seventeenth and the eighteenth centuries Donne's writings were largely forgotten or disapproved of. In June 1741 the London Magazine printed a regularised (to modern eyes butchered) version of Goe, and catche a...
Publishing
Barbara Pym
She wrote the first draft, she said later, over breakfast in bed in her flat in 1973-4, a period of serious health problems—first breast cancer and then a stroke—and of her decision to retire from...
Publishing
Anthony Trollope
Angela Thirkell
(an avowed disciple of Trollope) wrote an introduction for an edition of this novel in 1958; so did Pamela Hansford Johnson
for the Norton
edition four years later. A number of women writers...
Reception
Ivy Compton-Burnett
During the early part of ICB
's career she was little regarded or understood. Raymond Mortimer
was one of the first to perceive her quality, and she quickly began to attract the attention of younger...
Textual Production
Dylan Thomas
The publication was part of the prize offered by the Sunday Referee for the author of the best poem it had published that year. The previous year's winner had been Pamela Hansford Johnson
, currently...
Textual Production
Olivia Manning
New Stories also published Pamela Hansford Johnson
, Dylan Thomas
, and Stephen Spender
. OM
's title, which is challenging in a way that was characteristic for this stage of her career, comes from...
Textual Production
Mary Stewart
MS
was bored by modern movements like the anti-novel, the sicks and the beats, but felt there was a place for them: they're trying things out, keeping literature alive and moving.
Stewart, Mary. “Mary Stewart”. Counterpoint, edited by Roy Newquist, George Allen & Unwin , 1965, pp. 561-7.
561
She thought her...
Textual Production
Barbara Pym
In many ways this novel reflects BP
's undergraduate years at Oxford
, featuring characters and episodes based partly on herself, her sister, and her friends or acquaintances. Among these, Henry Harvey
and the future...
Textual Production
Ivy Compton-Burnett
The manuscript had been due in August 1964. At that time she told Gollancz then that it was not ready, but in a lamentable state.
Spurling, Hilary. Secrets of a Woman’s Heart. Hodder and Stoughton, 1984.
DW
's first story written at and about Barton Seagrave, the place to which she and her husband retired, was about a pretty girl she had watched from her window coping lightly with marriage...
Timeline
No timeline events available.
Texts
Johnson, Pamela Hansford. The Unspeakable Skipton. Macmillan; St Martin’s Press, 1958.
Johnson, Pamela Hansford. This Bed Thy Centre. Chapman and Hall; Harcourt Brace, 1935.
Johnson, Pamela Hansford. Too Dear for my Possessing. Collins; Carrick and Evans, 1940.
