Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
Lady Cynthia Asquith
-
Standard Name: Asquith, Lady Cynthia
Birth Name: Cynthia Mary Evelyn Charteris
Styled: Lady Cynthia Mary Evelyn Charteris
Married Name: Lady Cynthia Mary Evelyn Asquith
Pseudonym: C. Greene
Pseudonym: A Correspondent
Pseudonym: Leonard Gray
Used Form: Cynthia Asquith
LCA
is chiefly remembered as a diarist of the First World War, who gives a unique picture on its impact, both detailed and profound, on the lives of the English governing class. She also published novels, literary biographies, anthologies, journalism, plays, ghost stories, and works for children.
During the 1940s EB
published stories in the Listener (not for the first time), the New Yorker, Horizon, and the Cornhill, as well as in collections such as Penguin New Writing no...
Anthologization
Marghanita Laski
ML
's ghost story The Tower, appeared in Cynthia Asquith
's The Third Ghost Book.
Laski, Marghanita. “The Tower”. The Oxford Book of Twentieth-Century Ghost Stories, edited by Michael Cox, Oxford University Press, 1996, pp. 210-16.
210
Family and Intimate relationships
Sir J. M. Barrie
Without children of his own, Barrie had a habit of monopolising the children of friends, for whom he invented elaborate games. Among children so situated were Bevil Quiller-Couch
(who was later the fiancé of the...
Friends, Associates
Enid Bagnold
Bagnold's biographer Anne Sebba
writes that try as [EB
] might to belong to the artists' milieu, she could not release her other foot from the smart set.
Sebba, Anne. Enid Bagnold: The Authorized Biography. Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1986.
148
Bagnold's friends included socialist...
Friends, Associates
Viola Meynell
VM
met Lawrence
through Ivy Low
. Enthusiastic about his writing, she offered to lend him her cottage and to do his typing. During his stay on the Meynells' property, Lawrence introduced Viola to Ottoline Morrell
Friends, Associates
Sir J. M. Barrie
Lady Cynthia Asquith
became SJMB
's private secretary after the First World War. She worked for him for years (she needed the money), using the pseudonym C. Greene. They became close to each other.
Her literary friends included Lady Cynthia Asquith
, Lady Cynthia's mother Lady Wemyss
, Susan, Lady Tweedsmuir
, and E. V. Lucas
of Punch. With Lucas some kind of breach took place before the...
Friends, Associates
Margaret Kennedy
Through her marriage to Davies, Kennedy came into contact with the former Prime Minister Asquith
and his family. Her acquaintance with members of high society gave her considerable material for later fiction.
Powell, Violet. The Constant Novelist. W. Heinemann, 1983.
EB
's friend Desmond MacCarthy
approached Virginia Woolf
to review the book, but she refused, having taken a dislike to Bagnold and assuming that she had enmeshed poor old Desmond.
Friedman, Lenemaja. Enid Bagnold. Twayne, 1986.
9
As Woolf put it...
Literary responses
Barbara Pym
It was well reviewed by another novelist, Lady Cynthia Asquith
.
In a BBC
radio broadcast in 1978, Pym noted that this novel had caused someone to comment upon her dislike of men, to...
Textual Features
Enid Bagnold
The Squire, an unnamed upper-class woman, gives birth to her fifth child while her husband is doing business in India. The novel goes into detail about such matters as pregnancy, anaesthetics during childbirth, breastfeeding...
Timeline
3 September 1939: Britain and France officially declared war...
National or international item
3 September 1939
Britain and France officially declared war on Germany.
BBC Handbook: 1960. BBC, 1960, http://U of A HSS HE 8690 B86.
238
Briggs, Asa. The BBC: The First Fifty Years. Oxford University Press, 1985.
374
Mitchison, Naomi. Among You Taking Notes . . . The Wartime Diary of Naomi Mitchison 1939-1945. Editor Sheridan, Dorothy, Oxford University Press, 1986.
35-7
Keegan, John. The Second World War. Viking, 1990.
44-7, 54
Messenger, Charles. World War Two Chronological Atlas: When, Where, How and Why. Bloomsbury, 1989.