Antonia White

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Standard Name: White, Antonia
Birth Name: Eirene Adeline Botting
Pseudonym: Antonia White
Nickname: Tony
Pseudonym: Ann Jeffrey
Pseudonym: Jane Marshall
AW found composition a torment, suffered from recurrent writer's block, and discarded innumerable drafts of everything she wrote. Yet besides working as a journalist, she left more than thirty translations, four heavily autobiographical novels, some stories and poems, a play, a fragment of autobiography, two children's books, letters, and diaries amounting to more than a million words.
Vaux, Anna. “Biscuits. Oh good!”. London Review of Books, 27 May 1999, pp. 32-4.
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Connections

Connections Sort descending Author name Excerpt
Cultural formation Mary Wesley
MW was influenced in her religious thinking by several writers, including Simone Weil and Graham Greene . The novelist Antonia White stood as godmother to them both, and they seem to have fallen in mostly...
Family and Intimate relationships Mary Wesley
In wartime London in 1944 she met journalist, linguist, and playwright Eric Siepmann .
Wright, Daphne. “Mary Wesley”. Guardian Weekly, 1 Jan. 2003.
19
Marnham, Patrick. Wild Mary: the Life of Mary Wesley. Chatto and Windus, 2006.
127
While they dined in the same restaurant, but not together, he sent her a series of increasingly drunken notes...
Friends, Associates Anne Ridler
Her brother was working for publishers George Bell , and she met a number of authors, including Antonia White and Margaret Kennedy . Later, through her own work, she met with T. S. Eliot 's...
Friends, Associates Graham Greene
Personal friends who were Catholics or converted to that faith during the course of their friendships with Greene included Muriel Spark , Antonia White and the future writer Mary Wesley .
Friends, Associates Theodora Benson
TB enjoyed a wide circle of friends both literary and non-literary. The former included Rose Macaulay and Howard Spring . She met her future collaborator Betty Askwith (daughter of an old friend of her mother's)...
Friends, Associates Mary Wesley
Even when they lived in a remote spot, the Siepmanns' circle of close literary friends included Nancy Mitford , Graham Greene , Antonia White , and Emily Coleman .
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.
When MW became successful as a...
Literary responses Barbara Pym
BP 's father wrote to her on 3 May 1950 commending this novel, which he had not expected to enjoy since he preferred mysteries.
Wyatt-Brown, Anne M. Barbara Pym: A Critical Biography. University of Missouri Press, 1992.
157n12
Robert Liddell , who had been familiar with it throughout...
Literary responses Barbara Pym
Pym is not one of those women writers whose stock has risen through feminist re-evaluation. Five years after the influential Times Literary Supplement article was published, Penelope Lively wrote, I am always surprised that the...
Literary responses Elizabeth Jane Howard
EJH had a cool, but friendly review from Francis Wyndham and a very good one from Antonia White .
Howard, Elizabeth Jane. Slipstream. Macmillan, 2002.
210
She was astonished and delighted at the award of the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize (then...
Literary responses Leonora Carrington
In her 2017 assessment Marina Warner likens the text, as a testament to the horrors of psychosis and convulsive drug therapy that is split between visionary illumination and profound psychological distress, to such writing as...
Literary responses Flora Macdonald Mayor
Rediscovery of FMM was fostered by Sybil Oldfield , who in 1984 published an extensive account of Mayor's life and works (which she narrated in parallel with those of Mayor's contemporary Mary Sheepshanks ). During...
Occupation Graham Greene
GG also worked as director for two different London publishing houses: for Eyre and Spottiswoode from 1944 (when he resigned from the secret service) to 1948 and for Bodley Head for ten years beginning in...
Occupation Caroline Blackwood
In the year of her society debut Caroline got a job as a journalist on Picture Post. This lively, popular magazine, a pioneer of photojournalism, was then at the peak of its circulation, but...
Performance of text Michelene Wandor
MW 's early radio play on the life and work of Antonia White , Dust in the Sugar House, was broadcast on the BBC .
Michelene Wandor. http://www.mwandor.co.uk/.
Publishing Mary Wesley
In the same year that she published her first novel for adults, MW followed her first two children's books with a third, Haphazard House. Written after the death of her husband, and taking death...

Timeline

May 1978: Virago Press issued its first Virago Modern...

Women writers item

May 1978

Virago Press issued its first Virago Modern Classics, a historically important series most though not all of which were novels.
Callil, Carmen. “The stories of our lives”. Guardian Unlimited, 26 Apr. 2008.

Summer 2005: News broke that one of the bestselling nonfiction...

Women writers item

Summer 2005

News broke that one of the bestselling nonfiction books of the year, Judith Kelly 's Rock Me Gently, included passages almost verbally identical with passages by other authors.
Leith, Sam. “Sounds familiar? When ’memories’ seem to spring from other literary sources”. Telegraph.co.uk, 6 Aug. 2005.

Texts

White, Antonia. “A Child of the Five Wounds”. The Old School, edited by Graham Greene, Oxford University Press, 1984, pp. 209-26.
Maupassant, Guy de. A Woman’s Life. Translator White, Antonia, Hamish Hamilton, 1949.
White, Antonia. Antonia White: Diaries 1926-1957. Editor Chitty, Susan, Constable, 1991.
White, Antonia. As Once in May. Editor Chitty, Susan, Virago, 1983.
White, Antonia. BBC at War. BBC, 1942.
White, Antonia. Beyond the Glass. Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1954.
White, Antonia. Diaries 1958-1979. Editor Chitty, Susan, Constable, 1992.
White, Antonia. “Epitaph”. The Booster.
White, Antonia. Frost in May. Desmond Harmsworth, 1933.
White, Antonia. “Strangers”. New Statesman and Nation.
White, Antonia. Strangers. Harvill Press, 1954.
Colette,. The Complete Claudine. Translator White, Antonia, Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1976.
White, Antonia. The Hound and the Falcon. Longmans, 1965.
White, Antonia. “The House of Clouds”. Delta: Special Peace and Dismemberment Number with Jitterbug-Shag Requiem.
White, Antonia. The Lost Traveller. Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1950.
White, Antonia. The Sugar House. Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1952.
White, Antonia. Three in a Room. Samuel French, 1947.