Naomi Mitchison

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Standard Name: Mitchison, Naomi
Birth Name: Naomi Mary Margaret Haldane
Nickname: Nou
Nickname: Me
Married Name: Naomi Mary Margaret Mitchison
Titled: Lady Naomi Mary Margaret Mitchison
During her life of over a century (she narrowly missed living from the nineteenth into the twenty-first) NM averaged almost a book a year. She published novels, short stories, diaries, poetry, travel books, essays, and writing for children, all of them informed with the same vivid interest in the world around her and burning desire for its social betterment.
Black-and-white portrait of Naomi Mitchison. Her hair is pinned at the sides of her head in two buns and she is wearing a fuzzy sweater with two pom poms at the collar.

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
Friends, Associates Stevie Smith
SS developed lasting friendships with Naomi Mitchison and Rosamond Lehmann , both of whom reviewed her work. She was also close to US poet Naomi Replansky , with whom she corresponded before they met in 1969.
Smith, Stevie. Me Again. Editors Barbera, Jack and William McBrien, Vintage, 1983.
298-9
Friends, Associates Elizabeth Jenkins
EJ was mildly satirical about the left-wing and anti-monarchical tendencies of Naomi Mitchison (a well-known author of the times)
qtd. in
Jenkins, Elizabeth. The View from Downshire Hill. Michael Johnson, 2004.
105
and the allegedly somewhat self-important Vera Brittain (who, felt Jenkins, had let the...
Friends, Associates Phyllis Bentley
At a dinner party at Vera Brittain 's Chelsea house, PB met Naomi Mitchison , Cecil Roberts , and Ellen Wilkinson .
Brittain, Vera. Chronicle of Friendship. Editor Bishop, Alan, Gollancz, 1986.
39-40
Friends, Associates Ann Bridge
AB 's correspondents included Ka Arnold-Foster , John Betjeman , E. M. Forster , Margaret Haig Rhondda , Margaret Irwin , John Masefield , Naomi Mitchison , I. A. Richards , Vita Sackville-West , and...
Intertextuality and Influence Mary Renault
Homosexuals in British fiction had been portrayed mostly as sick, funny, or both since the Oscar Wilde trials (1895). E. M. Forster had kept his Maurice unpublished. Radclyffe Hall had run into trouble. Virginia Woolf
Intertextuality and Influence Elizabeth Taylor
As a child Betty Coles (later ET ) wrote plays (with very short scenes each demanding a new and elaborate setting) and stories. She said she always wanted to be a novelist.
qtd. in
Leclercq, Florence. Elizabeth Taylor. Twayne, 1985.
2
At twelve...
Leisure and Society Evelyn Sharp
Apart from travelling and hiking together and discussing their respective writing, the couple had in common their pleasure in folk dancing. They were both members of the English Folk Dance Society , founded by Evelyn's...
Literary responses Dorothy L. Sayers
Q. D. Leavis disliked this novel, and wrote a scathing review of it and its successor, Busman's Honeymoon, in Scrutiny. Leavis attacked DLS 's reputation for literariness, holding it against her that...
Literary responses Laura Riding
Among many personal replies was one from Naomi Mitchison , who visited Riding to argue that women are not innately inside but have been made so by being kept out of public activities, that politics...
Literary responses Stella Benson
It received favourable reviews both in the Dial and in Punch. For Naomi Mitchison (for whom this was the first book by SB that she had read), it was queer to find someone who...
Literary responses Helen Waddell
The book evoked a chorus of praise. Walter de la Mare wrote to Otto Kyllmann: She writes about poetry absolutely unknown to me, in a fashion that is in itself poetry.Kyllmann wrote to HW
Literary responses Stella Benson
The Nation and Athenæum said that this novel was a little masterpiece.
qtd. in
Benson, Stella. Tobit Transplanted. Macmillan, 1931.
363
Naomi Mitchison , who had not yet met SB , was moved when she read this book to send a fan letter:...
Literary responses Rosemary Sutcliff
The publishers had many laudatory quotes to use in their advertising for this book, including some from other historical novelists: Mary Renault and Naomi Mitchison . David Holloway praised it in the Daily Telegraph as...
Literary responses Stella Benson
Forty-six years after Benson's death, Naomi Mitchison acknowledged that her work had ceased being read, that her fantasy was misunderstood as whimsy. She felt, however, that in 1979 a revival was due.
Mitchison, Naomi. You May Well Ask: A Memoir 1920-1940. Gollancz, 1979.
127
It is...
Literary responses Annie Keary
The children of Charles Kingsley (whose own The Heroes, re-telling Greek mythological stories, had appeared a year before The Heroes of Asgard), were particularly keen on the Keary Norse collection.
Keary, Eliza. Memoir of Annie Keary. Macmillan, 1882.
125
A reprint...

Timeline

No timeline events available.

Texts

Mitchison, Naomi. Other People’s Worlds. Secker and Warburg, 1958.
Barker, Ernest, and Naomi Mitchison. “Preface”. The Conquered, Jonathan Cape, 1954.
Mitchison, Naomi. Sea-Green Ribbons. Balnain Books, 1991.
Mitchison, Naomi. Small Talk: Memories of an Edwardian Childhood. Bodley Head, 1973.
Mitchison, Naomi. Solution Three. 1st ed., Dennis Dobson, 1975.
Mitchison, Naomi. Solution Three. Feminist Press at The City University of New York, 1995.
Mitchison, Naomi. The Africans. Blond, 1970.
Mitchison, Naomi. The Big House. Faber and Faber, 1950.
Mitchison, Naomi. The Blood of the Martyrs. Constable and Company, 1939.
Mitchison, Naomi. The Bull Calves. Jonathan Cape, 1947.
Mitchison, Naomi. The Cleansing of the Knife, and other poems. Canongate, 1978.
Mitchison, Naomi. The Conquered. Jonathan Cape, 1923.
Mitchison, Naomi. The Conquered. Jonathan Cape, 1966.
Mitchison, Naomi. The Corn King and the Spring Queen. Jonathan Cape, 1931.
Mitchison, Naomi. The Delicate Fire: Short Stories and Poems. Jonathan Cape, 1933.
Mitchison, Naomi. The Delicate Fire: Short Stories and Poems. Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1933.
Mitchison, Naomi. The Fourth Pig. Constable, 1936.
Mitchison, Naomi. The Home and a Changing Civilisation. John Lane, 1934.
Mitchison, Naomi. The Laburnum Branch. Jonathan Cape, 1926.
Mitchison, Naomi. The Moral Basis of Politics. Constable and Company, 1938.
Mitchison, Naomi. The Oath-Takers. Balnain Books, 1991.
Mitchison, Naomi. The Powers of Light. Pharos, 1932.
Mitchison, Naomi, and Lewis Gielgud. The Price of Freedom, A Play in Three Acts. Jonathan Cape, 1931.
Mitchison, Naomi. Travel Light. Faber and Faber, 1952.
Mitchison, Naomi. We Have Been Warned. Constable and Company, 1935.