Ruth Prawer Jhabvala

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Standard Name: Jhabvala, Ruth Prawer
Birth Name: Ruth Prawer
Married Name: Ruth Jhabvala
Self-constructed Name: R. Prawer Jhabvala
RPJ has been successful in two careers: as a novelist (a dozen titles) and short-story writer (eight collections), and as an author of film scripts (twenty-three), many of them adaptations from published fiction.
Watts, Janet. “Ruth Prawer Jhabvala Obituary”. The Guardian, 3 Apr. 2013.
The two careers are, however, related. Her written fiction has moved from satirical social comedy about Indian middle-class society, to the impact of the myth of India on susceptible Westerners, to the social and personal whirlpools created when cultures meet, to the flourishing in rootless cultures of predatory, power-seeking individuals and movements. Her film scripts have followed a similar trajectory, while situating her chosen themes in a greater variety of settings and stories than her literary works.
Colour photo of Ruth Prawer Jhabvala at the home of her frequent collaborator, director James Ivory, in Claverack, New York, September 1981. She is wearring a tweed blazer and has her hands in her pockets. She is standing in a park in fall, and the sky is blue with many clouds. The are birch trees in the background are bare.

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
Friends, Associates Anita Desai
She is a lifelong friend of Ruth Prawer Jhabvala , whom she met when she was eighteen and trying to write, and Jhabvala, married with two children, had begun her publishing career.
Jaggi, Maya. “A passage from India”. Guardian.co.uk, 19 June 1999.
Intertextuality and Influence Anne Bradstreet
Bathsua Makin offered AB as an example of an excellent poet in her Essay to Revive the Ancient Education of Gentlewomen, 1673, thereby bringing her to the attention of a large female readership in...
Literary responses Rumer Godden
Nevertheless, Ruth Prawer Jhabvala implicitly criticises the limitations of their viewpoint in choosing to adapt their title for her Two More Under the Indian Sun (in How I Became a Holy Mother, and Other Stories...
Textual Production Anita Desai
AD began writing short stories and poems when she was seven, and some appeared in children's magazines. While an undergraduate she published short stories, reviews, and sketches in Delhi University 's magazine and other periodicals....
Textual Production Bernice Rubens
Writing a second novel, she said, was inevitable after the first, and after that she was hooked.
Rubens, Bernice. When I Grow Up. Time Warner Books, 2005.
139
She drew for it on her brother Harold's stories of his music teacher in London.
Rubens, Bernice. When I Grow Up. Time Warner Books, 2005.
10
The...
Textual Production Jean Rhys
It was directed by James Ivory , who co-wrote the screenplay with Ruth Prawer Jhabvala .The producers were Ismail Merchant and Jean Pierre Mahot , and it was distributed by New World Pictures . It...

Timeline

21 February 1924: The first issue appeared of the New Yorker...

Writing climate item

21 February 1924

The first issue appeared of the New Yorker magazine (still going strong in the twenty-first century).
Borne Back Daily. 2001, http://borneback.com/ .
21 February 2011
Kindley, Evan. “Ismism”. London Review of Books, Vol.
36
, No. 2, 23 Jan. 2014, pp. 33-5.
33

Texts

Jhabvala, Ruth Prawer. A Backward Place. John Murray, 1965.
Jhabvala, Ruth Prawer. A Lovesong for India. Little, Brown, 2011.
Jhabvala, Ruth Prawer. A New Dominion. John Murray, 1972.
Jhabvala, Ruth Prawer. A Stronger Climate: Nine Stories. John Murray, 1968.
Jhabvala, Ruth Prawer. An Experience of India. John Murray, 1971.
Jhabvala, Ruth Prawer. “Disinheritance”. Blackwood’s Magazine, pp. 4-14.
Jhabvala, Ruth Prawer. East into Upper East: Plain Tales from New York and New Delhi. John Murray, 1998.
Jhabvala, Ruth Prawer. Esmond in India. George Allen and Unwin, 1958.
Jhabvala, Ruth Prawer. Get Ready for Battle. John Murray, 1962.
Jhabvala, Ruth Prawer. Heat and Dust. John Murray, 1975.
Jhabvala, Ruth Prawer. Heat and Dust. Penguin, 1994.
Jhabvala, Ruth Prawer. How I Became a Holy Mother, and Other Stories. John Murray, 1976.
Jhabvala, Ruth Prawer. In Search of Love and Beauty. John Murray, 1983.
Jhabvala, Ruth Prawer. Like Birds, Like Fishes, and Other Stories. John Murray, 1963.
Jhabvala, Ruth Prawer. Out of India: Selected Stories. Morrow, 1986.
Jhabvala, Ruth Prawer. Poet and Dancer. John Murray, 1993.
Jhabvala, Ruth Prawer. Shards of Memory. John Murray, 1995.
Jhabvala, Ruth Prawer. The Householder. John Murray, 1960.
Jhabvala, Ruth Prawer. The Householder. Norton, 2001.
Jhabvala, Ruth Prawer. The Nature of Passion. George Allen and Unwin, 1956.
Jhabvala, Ruth Prawer. The Nature of Passion. Penguin, 1986.
Jhabvala, Ruth Prawer. Three Continents. John Murray, 1987.
Jhabvala, Ruth Prawer. To Whom She Will. Ramlochan Books, 1955.