Valerie Grosvenor Myer
| Valerie Winifred Grosvenor Myer | |
|---|---|
| Born |
Valerie Winifred Grosvenor Godwin April 13, 1935 Soudley, Gloucestershire, England |
| Died | August 9, 2007 (aged 72) Haddenham, Cambridgeshire, England |
| Occupation | Journalist, teacher, novelist, biographer, critic, encyclopedist |
| Spouse(s) | Michael Grosvenor Myer |
Valerie Winifred Grosvenor Myer (April 13, 1935 – August 9, 2007) was a British writer, university teacher, and editor.
Valerie Winifred Grosvenor Godwin was born in Lower Soudley in the Forest of Dean, Gloucestershire, England. Her parents, Donald Godwin and his wife Margaret (née Jones), owned several cottages, but the village had no electricity or indoor sanitation until she was in her late teens. An illegitimate connection, dating from the early nineteenth century, could be traced, through her great-great grandfather Richard Grosvenor, with the Grosvenor family, Marquesses and later Dukes of Westminster — on both sides as her parents were second cousins. She studied at East Dean Grammar School, leaving at the age of 16 to train as a librarian in Gloucester.
She began writing freelance reports for the Forest of Dean Mercury before being taken on as a reporter, and moved in 1958 to the Dartford Chronicle in Kent. She then worked for two Fleet Street women's magazines, Housewife (sub-editor) and Flair (Chief sub-editor). After marrying Michael Myer in 1959, she attended a course at the City Literary Institute.
On the advice of her lecturer, she entered for and won a Mature State Scholarship with an extended essay on one of Jane Austen's juvenilia, "Catherine, or the Bower", and its relationship to her mature work, and went up to Newnham College, Cambridge in 1963 to read English, graduating at the age of 31 with a first class degree. During her time at Cambridge, she wrote theatre criticism for The Guardian.
She was taught in her third year by the distinguished but opinionated Q D Leavis, to whom, as the supervisor held forth on the virtues of the 'organic community' during the course of a discussion of Thomas Hardy's Jude the Obscure, Valerie mentioned that she knew from experience that it could have its disadvantages, having herself had a rural upbringing with no electricity or modern sanitation. "Nonsense, dear," snapped know-it-all Mrs Leavis, "you're much too young!"
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