Isabel Quigly
‘I Am In Hell’
Margaret Storm Jameson: A Life
By Jennifer Birkett
Oxford University Press 423pp £25 order from our bookshop
‘I’m awfully bored with my position as the invisible aunt of English letters,’ Margaret Storm Jameson wrote in 1955. It was a neat phrase to describe herself. True, she was a ‘name’ of sorts in the literary world from the Twenties to the Sixties (more or less), but never a central figure, never much admired either critically or popularly, although the picture of her on the jacket is taken from a Wills cigarette card in a series of ‘Famous British Authors’.
There has never been a biography. Not, perhaps, surprisingly. At the time of her death (well into her nineties) in 1986 she was almost forgotten as a novelist, autobiographer, campaigner and political activist; even her good works – and they were many (particularly on behalf of refugees from
Sign Up to our newsletter
Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.@Lit_Review
Follow Literary Review on Twitter
We've extended our February offer for a week, meaning you can still get a six-month subscription for only £19.99.
Click below for details.
https://www.mymagazinesub.co.uk/literary-review/promo/literaryfebruary/
'McCarthy’s portrayal of a cosmos fashioned by God for killing and exploitation, in which angels, perhaps, are predators and paedophiles, is one that continues to haunt me.'
@holland_tom on reading Blood Meridian in the American west (£).
https://literaryreview.co.uk/devils-own-country
'Perhaps, rather than having diagnosed a real societal malaise, she has merely projected onto an entire generation a neurosis that actually affects only a small number of people.'
@HoumanBarekat on Patricia Lockwood's 'No One is Talking About This'.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/culturecrisis