Lady Violet Pakenham

Lady Violet Powell (13 March 1912 – 12 January 2002), born Violet Georgiana Pakenham, was a writer and critic. Her husband was author Anthony Powell.

Lady Violet was the third daughter of Thomas Pakenham, 5th Earl of Longford and Lady Mary Julia Child Villiers (daughter of Victor Child-Villiers, 7th Earl of Jersey). She was educated at St Margaret's School, Bushey.

A member of a literary family, Lady Violet's brothers were Edward Pakenham and Frank Pakenham, while her sisters included Lady Pansy Lamb and Mary Pakenham. She was herself a distinguished memoirist and biographer. Her The Life of a Provincial Lady (1988), on the life of E. M. Delafield, has been called by one critic "one of the best literary biographies of a British writer in the twentieth century". Those who knew the couple well believed that Lady Violet made significant contributions to the richness, depth and polish of her husband's work. She also wrote a biography of the English novelist Flora Annie Steel.

She is generally taken to be the model for the character of Isobel Tolland in her husband's novel sequence A Dance to the Music of Time.

Some of her books are:

She married Anthony Powell (21 December 1905 – 28 March 2000) on 1 December 1934 at All Saints Anglican Church, Ennismore Gardens, Knightsbridge; they had two children, Tristram and John.

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