Lady Ottoline Morrell

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Standard Name: Morrell, Lady Ottoline
Birth Name: Ottoline Violet Anne Bentinck
Titled: Lady Ottoline Anne Violet Bentinck
Married Name: Lady Ottoline Anne Violet Morrell
LOM is best known as an early twentieth-century literary hostess who appears frequently in the memoirs, biographies, and fictions written by her guests. She aspired to be a writer herself, and she produced journals, letters, and memoirs, as well as collaborating with Bertrand Russell on fiction and non-fiction.
Sepia-toned photograph of Lady Ottoline Morrell, shown from the shoulders up. She is wearing a dark velvet dress with a layer of lace at the top and arms made of semi-sheer ribbed material. Her hair is jaw length, dark, and curly, and she is wearing pearl earrings and necklaces.

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
Cultural formation Dora Carrington
Here, Morrell and another guest, writer Aldous Huxley (who were both friends of and loyal to Carrington's admirer Mark Gertler ), confronted Carrington about her reluctance to give up her virginity. She described the episode...
Family and Intimate relationships Lady Margaret Sackville
The friendship between the widowed James Ramsay MacDonald , Labour politician, and LMS began in 1912 and proved important and long-lasting. She was said to have declined a proposal of marriage from him. The writer...
Family and Intimate relationships Constance Holme
He was thirteen years older than she was. He too had succeeded his father in his position, and his employer was Lord Henry Bentinck , brother of Lady Ottoline Morrell . The marriage was childless...
Family and Intimate relationships Aldous Huxley
They met while she, a well-connected Belgian, boarded at Garsington (the home of Member of Parliament Philip Morrell and his wife Ottoline Morrell , a centre for conscientious objectors, where AH spent a good deal...
Friends, Associates Freya Stark
After her long recovery, FS continued to enjoy her popularity in London society. Sir Sydney Cockerell , director of Cambridge 's Fitzwilliam Museum , became a friend. She was introduced to Virginia Woolf , Rose Macaulay
Friends, Associates Edith Sitwell
ES had many friendships, and there were few notables in the artistic world whom she did not meet. Her friendships were quite volatile, with frequent quarrels, sometimes caused by the practical jokes and the heightened...
Friends, Associates Vernon Lee
VL also became friendly with Ottoline Morrell , Maurice Baring , and many Italian artists, critics, and aristocrats.
Colby, Vineta. Vernon Lee: A Literary Biography. University of Virginia Press, 2003.
133-4, 172
Friends, Associates E. H. Young
EHY corresponded with Lady Ottoline Morrell during the 1930s, and sent her copies of her novels.
Mezei, Kathy, and Chiara Briganti. “’She must be a very good novelist’: Rereading E. H. Young (1880-1949)”. English Studies in Canada, Vol.
27
, No. 3, Sept. 2001, pp. 303-31.
325n1
Friends, Associates Lady Margaret Sackville
LMS became, according to Mary Agnes Hamilton , one of those [e]verybody who was anybody in the anti-war movement, who gathered around Lady Ottoline Morrell .
Hamilton, Mary Agnes. Remembering My Good Friends. Jonathan Cape, 1944.
78
She was an occasional visitor at the Morrells'...
Friends, Associates Katherine Mansfield
KM spent a weekend visiting Lady Ottoline Morrell at Garsington; this was the first in a string of regular visits.
Alpers, Antony. The Life of Katherine Mansfield. Oxford University Press, 1982.
409-10
Friends, Associates Katherine Mansfield
Garsington Manor is a Jacobean manor house near Oxford. It was furnished in a romantic if somewhat whimsical style.
qtd. in
Boddy, Gillian. Katherine Mansfield: The Woman and the Writer. Penguin Books Australia, 1988, http://U of A HSS.
55
There its owner's wife, Lady Ottoline Morrell , a writer and a well-known hostess...
Friends, Associates Rose Allatini
Virginia Woolf , who gives no indication of having met RA herself, recorded satirically how in February 1919, after the appearace and prosecution of Despised and Rejected, Lady Ottoline Morrellswooped down upon Allatini...
Friends, Associates Dora Russell
During this period, the Russells' friends and associates included Sybil Thorndike and Lewis Casson , Ottoline Morrell , T. S. Eliot , W. B. Yeats , G. B. and Charlotte Shaw , Desmond MacCarthy ...
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 Elizabeth von Arnim
On her return to London, EA found that her husband's smear campaign had effectively alienated her from her established social set. She responded by cultivating a friendship with a younger man, Alexander Stuart Frere-Reeves

Timeline

From early summer 1915: Garsington Manor, near Oxford, the home of...

Building item

From early summer 1915

Garsington Manor, near Oxford, the home of Lady Ottoline and Philip Morrell , became a centre for many pacifists, conscientious objectors, and non-pacifist critics of the war.
Berkman, Joyce Avrech. Pacifism in England, 1914-1939. Yale University, 1967, http://U of A HSS.
23
Seymour, Miranda. Ottoline Morrell: Life on the Grand Scale. Farrar Straus Giroux, 1992.
223-4

Texts

Morrell, Lady Ottoline, and D’Arcy Cresswell. Dear Lady Ginger. Editor Shaw, Helen, Auckland University Press; Oxford University Press, 1983.
Morrell, Lady Ottoline, and D’Arcy Cresswell. Dear Lady Ginger. Editor Shaw, Helen, Century Press, 1984.
Morrell, Lady Ottoline, and Lord David Cecil. Lady Ottoline’s Album. Editor Heilbrun, Carolyn, Alfred A. Knopf, 1976.
Morrell, Lady Ottoline. Ottoline at Garsington. Editor Gathorne-Hardy, Robert, Faber and Faber, 1974.
Morrell, Lady Ottoline. Ottoline: The Early Memoirs of Lady Ottoline Morrell. Editor Gathorne-Hardy, Robert, Faber and Faber, 1963.