Ivy Compton-Burnett
| Ivy Compton-Burnett | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Born |
5 June 1884 Pinner, Middlesex, UK |
| Died | 27 August 1969 (aged 85) Kensington, London, England, UK |
| Occupation | Novelist |
Dame Ivy Compton-Burnett, DBE (/ˈkʌmptən/; 5 June 1884 – 27 August 1969) was an English novelist, published in the original editions as I. Compton-Burnett. She was awarded the 1955 James Tait Black Memorial Prize for her novel Mother and Son. Her work consists mostly of dialogue and focuses on family life among the late-Victorian or Edwardian upper middle class. Manservant and Maidservant (1947) is considered one of her best works.
Ivy Compton-Burnett was born in Pinner, Middlesex, on 5 June 1884, as the seventh of twelve children of a well-known homeopathic physician Dr James Compton-Burnett (pronounced 'Cumpton-Burnit'), by his second wife, Katharine (1855–1911), daughter of Rowland Rees, Mayor of Dover. Her first cousin was Margery Blackie, a homeopathic physician. Ivy grew up in Hove and London. She was educated at home with two brothers until the age of 14. She attended Addiscombe College, Hove, in 1898–1901, then boarded for two terms in 1901–02 at Howard College, Bedford, before embarking on a university degree in Classics. After graduating she in turn tutored four younger sisters at home.
Ivy's mother sent all her stepchildren away to boarding-school as soon as possible. According to the scholar Patrick Lyons, "In widowhood Compton-Burnett's mother provided her with an early model for the line of outrageous domestic bullies that appear in her novels, anticipating the grief-stricken and over-demanding Sophia Stace (Brothers and Sisters, 1929) and the more shamelessly lucid Harriet Haslem (Men and Wives, 1931), who declares candidly: 'I see my children's faces, and am urged by the hurt in them to go further, and driven on to the worse.'" Four of Ivy's sisters rebelled against home life in 1915 and moved up to London to live in a flat with the pianist Myra Hess. Ivy successfully managed the considerable family fortune after her mother's death.
...
Wikipedia