Those who have followed this
blog for a while will recall that back in 2015 I created a "World War II
Book List". It was a list of WWII-themed books mostly by women who
qualified for my master
list. It was divided into six thematic sections: 1) Diaries/Memoirs, 2)
Fiction: The Approach of War and Early Days, 3) Fiction: The Thick of It, 4)
Fiction: The Immediate Postwar, 5) Fiction: Retrospective (post-1950), 6) Other
Non-fiction.
I managed to update the list
once, in May of 2016, since which time it has languished, in part because its
format made it a pain to revise. Since I have done lots more research in those
four years—including quite a lot in preparation for the WWII-themed Furrowed
Middlebrow titles from Dean Street Press last year—I had lots and lots of new
titles to add. But I just couldn't face that format. In addition to logistics,
it was a wee bit clunky conceptually, since although everyone who reads a lot
of WWII fiction will recognize the distinction between the cheerful, gung-ho
tone of most "early days" novels and the more fatigued tone of novels
from the "thick of it", it was sometimes challenging to determine where
lesser-known titles belonged. Likewise, it always bothered me that the works of
an author like Angela Thirkell or D. E. Stevenson, for example, were split
across three or even four sections of the list.
So, the old list is done with,
finished, finito! (Well, not really, it's here
if you really want to refer back to it, but it is outdated and will not be updated.) It is being replaced with
this list, dedicated to fiction, and another soon-to-be-posted list of
non-fiction.
This time, the list is in
alphabetical order by author, then chron order for each author's works. I've
kept the categories, highlighted after each title, but I've tweaked them to simply
Approach, Wartime, Postwar, and Retrospective. (As before, "Postwar"
indicates a title published in the few years right after the war and including
details of postwar conditions, while "Retrospective" indicates a work
set in wartime or the immediate postwar but published significantly later, with
all the shifts in perspective that that passage of time tends to entail.) A
soon-to-follow World War II Non-Fiction List will encompass the diaries,
memoirs, and miscellaneous non-fiction that were included on the original list.
A fair number of new additions on that portion as well.
I think this makes the list
more useful and orderly, and it certainly makes it easier to edit. Hopefully,
it also makes it easier for readers to see if a book they've come across is included
or not, so please don't hesitate to drop me an email or comment below if you
find a title you think belongs here…
There's a whole slew of new
additions to the list. I hope you enjoy perusing!
UPDATED 4/23/2020 (thanks to all those who made
suggestions!)
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RUTH
ADAM, War on Saturday Week (1937) APPROACH
Though written before WWII actually began, follows a
group of siblings from childhood during World War I to the outbreak of World
War II.
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RUTH
ADAM, There Needs No Ghost (1939) APPROACH
Humorously contrasts the reactions of villagers and
Bloomsburyites to the Munich Crisis. Reviewed here.
|
RUTH
ADAM, Murder in the Home Guard
(1942) WARTIME
Mystery set
during the Blitz, full of interesting details and perspectives on the war.
Reviewed here.
|
RUTH
ADAM, A House in the Country (1957) POSTWAR
Just after the
war, a group of friends try living in a run-down manor house in Kent, with
mixed results. Reviewed here.
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MABEL ESTHER ALLAN, Time to Go Back (1972)
RETROSPECTIVE
Tale of a young
girl in Liverpool who travels back in time to witness her mother and aunt’s
tragic wartime past.
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MABEL ESTHER ALLAN, Tomorrow Is a Lovely Day (1979) RETROSPECTIVE
Teenage girl,
orphaned in the Blitz, recovers in the English countryside.
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MABEL ESTHER ALLAN, A Strange Enchantment (1981) RETROSPECTIVE
Sixteen-year-old
girl joins the Land Army.
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ROSE
ALLATINI, Family from Vienna (1941) APPROACH
Set during and after the Anschluss among an
assimilated Jewish family in London who take in refugee relatives from
Austria.
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ROSE
ALLATINI, Destination Unknown
(1942) WARTIME
Deals with a large Jewish family in London, some of
whom are refugees now working as domestic helpers.
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ROSE
ALLATINI, Blue Danube (1943) WARTIME
Traces a Jewish family over several generations,
ending in London during World War II.
|
MARGERY
ALLINGHAM, Traitor's Purse (1941) WARTIME
Campion novel set
during the phony war; part mystery, part wartime spy thriller.
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MARGERY
ALLINGHAM, Coroner's Pidgin (1945) WARTIME
Campion tracking
art thieves during the war, while Lugg keeps a pig in a bomb shelter as his
war work.
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MARGERY ALLINGHAM, The Tiger in the Smoke (1952) POSTWAR
Campion in the
London underworld of the immediate postwar years.
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LUCILLA
ANDREWS, One Night in London (1979) RETROSPECTIVE
LUCILLA
ANDREWS, After a Famous Victory (1984) RETROSPECTIVE
LUCILLA
ANDREWS, The Phoenix Syndrome (1987) RETROSPECTIVE
LUCILLA
ANDREWS, Frontline 1940 (1990) RETROSPECTIVE
Pressured to
remove wartime themes from her early novels, romance novelist Andrews
returned to the war in these late works. Her powerful memoir No Time for Romance provides her
real-life experiences.
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MARJORIE
APPLETON, Anything Can Happen
(1942) WARTIME
Novel about a domestic servant conscripted into work
in a munitions factory.
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HELEN
ASHTON, Tadpole Hall (1941) WARTIME
The story of "gentle, retiring Colonel Heron and his home, Tadpole Hall, the
leisurely tradition they both represent and the incursions which war
brings."
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HELEN ASHTON, Joanna
at Littlefold (1942) WARTIME
Two women left alone by
the war make their way in a country town in England during the Blitz.
Published in the U.S. as Joanna.
Reviewed here.
|
HELEN
ASHTON, Yeoman's Hospital (1944) WARTIME
Entertaining melodrama set
at a village hospital during wartime.
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HELEN ASHTON, The Captain Comes Home (1947) POSTWAR
A man missing in
the war and presumed dead suddenly appears and is charged with assaulting his
wife's new husband.
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HELEN ASHTON, The Half-Crown House (1956) POSTWAR
Very much a novel
about a house, with lush details of its past and present, it's also a novel
about the scars the war has left behind. Reviewed here.
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BERYL BAINBRIDGE, The Dressmaker (1973)
RETROSPECTIVE
Set in Liverpool during
the war, this novel focuses on a young woman living with her two aunts.
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DOROTHY BAKER, Coast Town Tapestry (1946) WARTIME
Described in a blurb as
"a novel with a wartime background."
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KITTY
BARNE, Visitors from London (1940) WARTIME
Barne's most famous work, about evacuees on a Sussex farm. Reviewed here.
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KITTY
BARNE, We'll Meet in England (1942) WARTIME
Wartime adventure about
two children from Norway escaping to England by boat.
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KITTY
BARNE, While the Music Lasted
(1943) WARTIME
Sequel to Barne's
She Shall Have Music (1938), which
follows her heroine through her musical studies and into romance. Set late
1930s into the war. Reviewed here.
|
KITTY BARNE, Enter Two Musicians (1944) WARTIME
Set in the world
of music in the thick of World War II.
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KITTY BARNE, Three and a Pigeon (1944) WARTIME
Children's
adventure featuring two bombed out children staying in a country home.
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KITTY
BARNE, Musical Honours (1947) POSTWAR
Family tale about
musical children just after the end of the war; their father returns home
from being a prisoner of war. Reviewed here.
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MABEL
BARNES-GRUNDY, Paying Pests (1941) WARTIME
MABEL
BARNES-GRUNDY, The Two Miss Speckles
(1946) WARTIME
Wartime novels by
humorous novelist. The second deals with two sisters in Bath who take in
lodgers as their war work.
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ANNE
BARRETT, The Journey of Johnny Rew
(1954) POSTWAR
Set in Dorset, children's
tale of a boy orphaned in the Blitz
searching for his parents' origins.
|
NINA
BAWDEN, Carrie's War (1973) RETROSPECTIVE
Acclaimed
children’s book about the evacuation of a young girl and her brother to a Welsh village
during World War II and the effect their stay has on her later life.
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BARBARA BEAUCHAMP, Wine of Honour (1946) POSTWAR
Set immediately
after the end of the war, details both men and women returning from service
and adjusting to postwar life. Reviewed here,
and reprinted as a Furrowed Middlebrow book from Dean Street Press.
|
HELEN
BEAUCLERK, So Frail a Thing (1940) WARTIME
HELEN
BEAUCLERK, Shadows on the Wall
(1941) WARTIME
HELEN
BEAUCLERK, Where the Treasure Is
(1944) WARTIME
According to Contemporary Authors, these novels
"depict the lives of men and women as they intertwine during World War
II."
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JOSEPHINE
BELL, Martin Croft (1941) WARTIME
About a man wounded in
World War I for whom Dunkirk is a healing experience.
|
JOSEPHINE
BELL, Trouble at Wrekin Farm (1942) WARTIME
Mystery novel
rife with Home Guard concerns, fifth columnists, and other wartime
atmosphere.
|
JOSEPHINE
BELL, Death at the Medical Board (1944) WARTIME
Mystery about the
sudden death of a young woman as she's about to sign up for the women's
services.
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JOSEPHINE BELL, Total War at Haverington (1947) WARTIME
An English town
adjusting to wartime conditions.
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MARY
HAYLEY BELL, Men in Shadow (1942) WARTIME
Hit play focused
on the French Resistance.
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MARGOT BENARY-ISBERT, The Ark (1953) POSTWAR
MARGOT BENARY-ISBERT, Rowan Farm (1954) POSTWAR
Children's titles
set in Germany immediately after the end of WWII—by a German-American author,
but of interest for this list.
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ELIZABETH
BERRIDGE, Tell It to a Stranger
(1947, aka Selected Stories) WARTIME
Powerful
collection of stories, including several set during the Blitz.
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EMERY BONETT, High Pavement (1944) WARTIME
Mystery novel
with a touch of romance, set in an English village in wartime. Published in
the U.S. as Old Mrs Camelot.
|
MARY
BORDEN, Passport for a Girl (1939) APPROACH
Described as "a perceptive account of English
attitudes to the rise of Nazism."
|
ANNE BOSTON, Wave Me Goodbye: Stories of the Second
World War (1988) WARTIME
Anthology of
wartime stories by women.
|
PHYLLIS
BOTTOME, The Mortal Storm (1937) APPROACH
Novel warning about the rise of the Nazis; made into
a Hollywood propaganda piece in 1940.
|
PHYLLIS
BOTTOME, London Pride (1941) WARTIME
A poor family,
their young son, and a neighbor girl dodging bombs and wrestling with issues
of poverty, evacuation, and looting.
|
PHYLLIS
BOTTOME, Within the Cup (1943, aka Survival) WARTIME
Also focused on
the Blitz, and on an Austrian refugee psychiatrist.
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PHYLLIS
BOTTOME, The Life-Line (1946) APPROACH
Set in Austria in 1938.
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ELIZABETH
BOWEN, The Heat of the Day (1948) WARTIME
Considered a
classic of "Blitz lit," one critic called it a Graham Greene
thriller filtered through the sensibility of Virginia Woolf.
|
ELIZABETH
BOWEN, Collected Stories (1980) WARTIME
Includes all of
Bowen's wartime stories, including several of her most famous.
|
Mystery novel set
as war is looming.
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DOROTHY BOWERS, Deed
Without a Name (1940) WARTIME
Mystery novel set
in the midst of the Phony War.
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DOROTHY BOWERS,
Fear and Miss Betony (1941) WARTIME
Beautifully-written,
melancholy mystery set in a girls' boarding school evacuated to Dorset.
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CHRISTIANNA
BRAND, Heads You Lose
(1942) WARTIME
Mystery set in a snowed-in country
house during the war, but apparently making relatively little use of its
wartime setting.
|
CHRISTIANNA
BRAND, Green for Danger (1942) WARTIME
Brand's most
famous mystery, set in a hospital during World War II and thick with the atmosphere of
bombings and blackout.
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CHRISTIANNA
BRAND, Suddenly at His Residence (1946, aka The Crooked Wreath) WARTIME
Though published
after the war, this mystery makes effective use of bombs and late war years
fatigue.
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CHRISTIANNA BRAND (as Mary Roland), The Single Pilgrim (1946) WARTIME
Suggested to
Brand by the Ministry of Health, a novel about a woman who gets syphilis as a
result of an affair with a pilot.
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CHRISTIANNA
BRAND, Death of Jezebel
(1948) POSTWAR
Mystery novel
which evokes the postwar feel of London just after the war.
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ANGELA BRAZIL, The Mystery of the Moated Grange
(1942) WARTIME
ANGELA BRAZIL, The Secret of the Border Castle (1943) WARTIME
Late Brazil
tales, both set in evacuated schools.
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ELINOR M.
BRENT-DYER, The Chalet School in Exile
(1940) WARTIME
Deals with the Chalet girls' encounters with Nazis
and the school's escape from Austria to Guernsey. A fan favorite in the
Chalet School series.
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ELINOR M.
BRENT-DYER, The Chalet School Goes to
It (1941) WARTIME
The Chalet girls must again escape, this time to
Wales, as the Nazis sieze control of Guernsey.
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ELINOR M.
BRENT-DYER, The Highland Twins at the
Chalet School (1942) WARTIME
ELINOR M.
BRENT-DYER, Lavender Laughs in the
Chalet School (1943) WARTIME
ELINOR M.
BRENT-DYER, Gay From China at the
Chalet School (1944) WARTIME
ELINOR M.
BRENT-DYER, Jo to the Rescue (1945) WARTIME
Additional
wartime entries in the Chalet School series, all with a backdrop of war.
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ANN BRIDGE, A Place to Stand (1953) RETROSPECTIVE
ANN BRIDGE, The Tightening String (1962) RETROSPECTIVE
Popular
novelist’s tales of Hungary in wartime.
|
VERA BRITTAIN, Account Rendered (1945) WARTIME
Pacifist novel
dealing with a shell-shocked doctor on trial for murder.
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CAROL BROOKE, Light
and Shade (1947) WARTIME
Romantic novel
set during the war.
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DORITA FAIRLIE
BRUCE, Dimsie Carries On (1941) WARTIME
DORITA FAIRLIE
BRUCE, Toby at Tibbs Cross (1943) WARTIME
DORITA FAIRLIE
BRUCE, Nancy Calls the Tune (1944) WARTIME
Wartime entries
for each of Bruce's three popular girls' series characters.
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KATE MARY BRUCE, Figures
in Black-Out (1941) WARTIME
Novel set partly
during World War II.
|
BRYHER, Beowulf (1956) RETROSPECTIVE
Powerful “blitz
lit” novel detailing the experiences of two women running a tea shop under harsh
wartime constraints.
|
KATHARINE
BURDEKIN, Swastika Night (1937) APPROACH
Dystopian novel set after
centuries of Nazi and Japanese rule of the world.
|
HESTER BURTON, In Spite of All Terror (1968) RETROSPECTIVE
Children’s novel
set during wartime and featuring scenes of evacuation, bombings, and the
Dunkirk evacuation.
|
MARGARET BUTCHER, Vacant
Possession (1940) WARTIME
Novel about the effects of
the beginning of the war on a neighborhood near the Fulham road.
|
DIANA BUTTENSHAW, Journey to
Venice (1949) POSTWAR
Young Englishwoman, having
made a disastrous marriage to an Italian prisoner of war and then leaving
him, explores the beauty and the scars of war as she travels across Italy.
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ALICE CAMPBELL, Ringed
with Fire (1943) WARTIME
Murder mystery
set during the Blitz.
|
SARAH CAMPION, Thirty Million Gas Masks (1937)
APPROACH
Described as "a Near Future tale predictive of
the coming catastrophe."
|
JOANNA CANNAN, Death at the Dog
(1939) WARTIME
Mystery set in the
earliest days of the war. Reviewed here.
|
ELIZABETH
CARFRAE, The Lonely Road (1942) WARTIME
Elizabeth Maslen: "the debate between pacifism
and commitment to war are at the core of the romance."
|
ELIZABETH
CARFRAE, Penny Wise (1945) WARTIME
Wartime romance
from popular author.
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ELIZABETH CARFRAE, Good Morning, Miss Morrison (1948) WARTIME
Romantic novel
about a teacher in a girls' school and her choice between "a steady-Eddie
type and a glamorous fighter pilot during wartime."
|
VIOLA CASTANG, Mrs
Clements (1947) POSTWAR
Novelist just out
of the ATS relocates to an English village.
|
ROMILLY CAVAN, Beneath the
Visiting Moon (1940) APPROACH
Delightful comedy of family
and village life and of approaching war getting in the way of romance.
Reviewed here. Available as a Furrowed
Middlebrow reprint.
|
HESTER W.
CHAPMAN, Long Division (1943) WARTIME
About an
unhappily-married woman who starts a prep school during the war years.
|
BRIDGET
CHETWYND, Sleeping and Waking
(1944) WARTIME
Odd novel in which chapters alternate between
adults' sophisticated chatter and a child's vivid dreams.
|
BRIDGET
CHETWYND, Death Has Ten Thousand Doors
(1951) POSTWAR
BRIDGET
CHETWYND, Rubies, Emeralds and Diamonds
(1952) POSTWAR
Two mystery novels featuring Petunia Best, an
ex-WAAF who teams up with a former intelligence officer to form a detective
agency.
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AGATHA
CHRISTIE, N or M (1941) WARTIME
Christie's one
wartime mystery actually set during the war—Tommy and Tuppence track an
undercover German agent.
|
AGATHA
CHRISTIE, Absent in the Spring
(1944) WARTIME
One of Christie's
Mary Westmacott novels, set in the Middle East as a woman reflects on her
life while waiting for a train. The war remains firmly in the background.
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AGATHA
CHRISTIE, Taken at the Flood (1948) POSTWAR
The one Poirot
novel to (briefly) feature the war; in the opening, we see Poirot, in
flashback, experiencing an air raid while at his club.
|
EILEEN HELEN
CLEMENTS, Cherry Harvest (1943) WARTIME
Mystery novel set
on a crumbling country estate to which a girls' school has been evacuated.
Reviewed here.
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EILEEN HELEN
CLEMENTS, Berry Green (1945) WARTIME
A thriller set in
an English village, in which a visiting actor might be a German spy.
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EILEEN HELEN
CLEMENTS, Weathercock (1949) POSTWAR
Clements' series detective
and his wife return to the home they had lent to refugees during the war, to
find a "library book with interesting sketches inside."
|
MARJORIE
CLEVES, A School Goes to Scotland
(1944) WARTIME
Presumably this
girls' school story deals with a school evacuated to Scotland?
|
DOROTHY CLEWES,
The Blossom on the Bough (1944) WARTIME
Though the bulk
of the story is told in flashback, the present day portion takes place late
in the war, when a middle-aged woman considers buying back her family home,
triggering memories of her earlier life.
|
JOAN COCKIN, Curiosity Killed the Cat (1947)
POSTWAR
Mystery set in a Cotswold village just after World
War II, having to do with the Ministry of Scientific Research, which was set
up there in wartime but has lingered into peacetime.
|
JOAN COGGIN, The Mystery at
Orchard House (1946) APPROACH
Humorous Lady Lupin mystery set at a country hotel
in Kent on the cusp of the war.
|
JOAN COGGIN, Penelope Passes, or
Why Did She Die? (1946)
POSTWAR
Coggin went directly from pre-war, in The Mystery at Orchard House, to the
immediate postwar in this Lady Lupin mystery.
|
JOAN COGGIN, Dancing With Death
(1947) POSTWAR
Final Lady Lupin mystery, set in the years of
postwar austerity.
|
MARGARET COLE (w. G. D. H. Cole), Murder
at the Munition Works (1940)
Mystery presumably set in the early days of the war.
|
MARGARET COLE
(w. G. D. H. Cole), Toper's End
(1942) WARTIME
Far-fetched (and
reportedly anti-Semitic) thriller about murder among a team of scientists.
|
BARBARA COMYNS, Mr.
Fox (1987) RETROSPECTIVE
Set during the
war and based on Comyns' own life after the breakup of her first marriage.
|
MABEL CONSTANDUROS, So They Were Married (1942) WARTIME
Wartime family drama from a prominent actress and playwright.
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LETTICE COOPER,
Black Bethlehem (1947) WARTIME
Three novellas, two about
the war—one featuring an injured war hero adapting to home life, the other
about a woman who takes in a shady refugee.
|
LETTICE COOPER,
Fenny (1953) RETROSPECTIVE
Set before and after the
war in Florence, which follows a young girl from her arrival in Italy as a
governess through turbulent events both personal and political.
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SUSAN COOPER, Dawn of Fear
(1970) RETROSPECTIVE
Tale of three boys'
adventures living just outside of London during the Blitz.
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MARCH COST (as
Margaret Morrison) & PAMELA TULK-HART, Paid to Be Safe (1942) WARTIME
Focused on women
in the Air Transport Auxiliary, whose "lives turn out to be an odd blend of strenuous
activity, flying jargon, bridge hands and romance."
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GWENDOLINE COURTNEY, The Denehurst Secret Service (1940) WARTIME
GWENDOLINE COURTNEY, Well Done Denehurst (1941) WARTIME
Popular girls' author's adventure tales involving German spies.
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GWENDOLINE COURTNEY, Sally's
Family (1946) POSTWAR
Charming novel about a
young girl trying to make a home for her five orphaned siblings, who have
been evacuated to different families during the war and have developed very
different personalities. Reviewed here.
|
FRANCES CRANE, The Yellow Violet
(1942) WARTIME
Humorous American mystery
set in San Francisco in the early days of World War II.
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FANNY CRADOCK,
Castle Rising series (1975-1985)
RETROSPECTIVE
Eccentric chef
and novelist’s popular series tracing a family’s fortunes, including the war
years.
|
RICHMAL
CROMPTON, Mrs. Frensham Describes a
Circle (1942) WARTIME
Entertaining tale
of a woman who, having lost her husband, re-engages with life by involving
herself in the affairs of others. Reviewed here.
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RICHMAL
CROMPTON, William at War WARTIME
Compilation of
several of William's wartime misadventures.
|
PRIMROSE
CUMMING, Silver Eagle Carries On
(1940) WARTIME
A family-run riding
school struggles with wartime limitations.
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PRIMROSE
CUMMING, Owls Castle Farm (1942) WARTIME
Based on
Cumming's own experiences as a Land Girl.
|
MORAY DALTON, The
Art School Murders (1943) WARTIME
MORAY DALTON, Death
at the Villa (1946) WARTIME
Mystery novels
set in wartime.
|
CLEMENCE DANE, The Arrogant History of White Ben
(1939) APPROACH
Allegorical novel about the rise of Hitler and the
Nazis.
|
SHIRLEY DARBYSHIRE, Distant Music (1942) WARTIME
Novel of family
life in wartime.
|
SHIRLEY DARBYSHIRE, City Without Sentinel (1944) WARTIME
Tale of a young
woman adapting to life outside of London and to the guests the war brings to
her door.
|
THERESA DE KERPELY (writing as Teresa Kay), A Crown of Ashes (1952) RETROSPECTIVE
Novel based on
her wartime experiences living in Budapest, published pseudonymously to
protect family members still living in Hungary.
|
ELISABETH DE WAAL, The Exiles
Return (2013) POSTWAR
Written much earlier but
only published by Persephone in 2013. Set in 1954, tells of three Austrians
returning home after years away.
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E. M.
DELAFIELD, The Provincial Lady in
Wartime (1940) WARTIME
Follows Delafield's beloved title character into the
early days of the war.
|
E. M.
DELAFIELD, No One Now Will Know
(1941) APPROACH
Begins on the cusp of the war but then flashes back
to the 1870s.
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E. M.
DELAFIELD, Late and Soon (1943) WARTIME
Deals with a widow taking in evacuees.
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JOYCE DENNYS, Henrietta’s War (1985) WARTIME
Hilarious fictionalized letters about home front
life, first published in Sketch
magazine during World War II.
|
JOYCE DENNYS, Henrietta Sees It Through (1986) WARTIME
More of Dennys's fictionalized letters from Sketch magazine.
|
ALEXANDRA DICK,
How Can We Sing? (1942) WARTIME
Tale set among refugee Poles in Sweden.
|
MONICA DICKENS,
Mariana (1940) WARTIME
Heroine recalls
her early life as she waits to hear of her husband's fate after his ship has
been sunk.
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MONICA DICKENS,
The Fancy (1943) WARTIME
Makes use of Dickens'
experiences working in a wartime factory.
|
MONICA DICKENS,
The Happy Prisoner (1946) POSTWAR
Deals with a wounded
soldier trying to adapt to life after war.
|
OLIVE DOUGAN, The Schoolgirl
Refugee (1940) WARTIME
OLIVE DOUGAN, Schoolgirls in
Peril (1944) WARTIME
Wartime school stories
|
ANNE DUFFIELD, A Bevy of Maids
(1941, aka Volunteer Nurse) WARTIME
Novel focused on a women's
ambulance unit in the African Desert.
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MARY DUNSTAN, Banners in Bavaria (1939) APPROACH
Dealing with a "typical" German family on
the brink of the war; praised for its "extraordinarily impressive
picture of Munich on the night of the Anschluss celebrations."
|
MARY DUNSTAN, What Comes After
(1950) POSTWAR
Unmarried woman back in
Scotland after the ATS and estranged from her family adjusts to postwar life.
|
JOSEPHINE
ELDER, Strangers at the Farm School
(1940) WARTIME
The last of
Elder's Farm School trilogy; the strangers of the title are Jewish refugees
escaping from Hitler. Reviewed here.
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JOSEPHINE
ELDER, The Encircled Heart (1951) APPROACH, WARTIME
A woman doctor's
challenges and triumphs in the 1930s and 1940s, including World War II,
written from the author's personal knowledge.
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JOSEPHINE
ELDER, Doctor's Children (1954) POSTWAR
Focuses on an
abandoned wife and mother who revives her career as a doctor in the years
just after the war, when the National Health Service is just beginning.
Reviewed here.
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JANICE ELLIOTT, A
State of Peace (1971) RETROSPECTIVE
Set just after
WWII. Young woman adjusts to the anticlimax of postwar life.
|
JANICE ELLIOTT, Secret
Places (1981) RETROSPECTIVE
Set in WWII
girls' school, about a girl's friendship with a war refugee.
|
SUSAN ERTZ, Anger in the Sky (1943) WARTIME
Blitz novel
critiqued by Saturday Review as
"a little unduly hopeful about the good effects which will result from
the war."
|
CONSTANCE M. EVANS, Enter—A Land Girl (1944) WARTIME
CONSTANCE M. EVANS (as MAIRI O'NAIR), Judy Ashbane, Police Decoy (1944) WARTIME
CONSTANCE M. EVANS (as MAIRI O'NAIR), Storm Over Sandham Park (1944) WARTIME
CONSTANCE M. EVANS (as MAIRI O'NAIR), Four Steps Upwards (1945) WARTIME
Popular romance
author's wartime tales, some including mystery/thriller elements.
|
KATHLEEN EYLES (as CATHERINE TENNANT), Major Road Ahead (1942) WARTIME
"The story
of an up-to-date girl and her men friends before and during the war."
|
GWENDOLEN
FEATHERSTONHAUGH, Caroline's First Term
(1947) WARTIME
Girls' school story making fun use of wartime
cliches, including a science mistress who may be a Nazi spy.
|
MONICA FELTON, To All the Living (1945) WARTIME
Novel dealing with wartime factory life in England.
|
RACHEL
FERGUSON, A Footman for the Peacock
(1940) WARTIME
Vivid, hilarious,
and distinctly unusual portrait of a terrible family determined not to face
wartime hardships. Reviewed here. Available as a
Furrowed Middlebrow reprint.
|
RACHEL
FERGUSON, The Late Widow Twankey
(1943) WARTIME
Even odder than Ferguson's norm; set during wartime
in an English village apparently possessed by the characters of pantomime.
Reviewed here.
|
RACHEL FERGUSON, Sea
Front (1954) RETROSPECTIVE
Traces, in
Ferguson's eccentric fashion, life in a seaside resort town before, during,
and after WWII.
|
RUBY FERGUSON, The Moment of Truth (1944) WARTIME
About a young girl before and during WWII.
|
RUBY FERGUSON, Our
Dreaming Done (1946) POSTWAR
Romantic melodrama about a war widow feeling
smothered by life with her upper-crust in-laws.
|
RUBY FERGUSON, The
Wakeful Guest (1962) RETROSPECTIVE
Rather uninspired
mystery/melodrama focused on a superficial young woman’s encounters with
refugees of war.
|
ELIZABETH
FERRARS, I, Said the Fly (1945) WARTIME
Mystery set in London just before
and at the very end of World War II.
|
ELIZABETH
FERRARS, Murder Among Friends
(1946, aka Cheat the Hangman) WARTIME
Mystery set
during the war.
|
KATHERINE FIELD, Disappearance
of a Niece (1941) WARTIME
KATHERINE FIELD, The
Two-Five to Mardon (1942) WARTIME
Wartime mystery
novels featuring some overlap of characters.
|
KATHERINE FIELD, Murder
to Follow (1944) WARTIME
Mystery novel set
in 1939, beginning with the disappearance of a baby during the chaos of early
evacuations.
|
ANN FIELDING, The
Mayfair Squatters (1945) WARTIME
Empty house in
wartime London is occupied by a disparate group of squatters.
|
PENELOPE FITZGERALD, Human Voices (1980) RETROSPECTIVE
Set at
Broadcasting House in London during WWII.
|
HELEN FOLEY, A
Handful of Time (1961) RETROSPECTIVE
A Book Society
Choice that deals with two women, one British and one Austrian, from
immediately before WWII until "its confused aftermath," set mostly
at or in Cambridge, with occasional scenes in Austria.
|
CAROL FORREST, The House of Simon (1942) WARTIME
An intriguing wartime tale
of abandoned children making their own home.
|
HELEN FORRESTER, Three
Women of Liverpool (1984) RETROSPECTIVE
Set in Liverpool
in 1941, based on Forrester's own youth during the war.
|
PAMELA FRANKAU,
Shaken in the Wind (1948) POSTWAR
Traces an ATS officer's experiences of
demobilisation and her relationship with an American officer.
|
PAMELA FRANKAU,
The Willow Cabin (1949) APPROACH, WARTIME, POSTWAR
With sections set
before, during, and after the war, Frankau's lovely novely set in and around
the theatre qualifies for three categories of this list.
|
ELIZABETH FRAYNE, Life Goes On (1941) WARTIME
Follows the four
young Brooke sisters into wartime adventures.
|
SARAH GAINHAM, Night
Falls on the City (1967) RETROSPECTIVE
SARAH GAINHAM, A
Place in the Country (1968) RETROSPECTIVE
SARAH GAINHAM, Private
Worlds (1971) RETROSPECTIVE
A trilogy. Night Falls was a bestseller and BOMC
selection, set in Vienna during the war. The less acclaimed sequels are set,
respectively, soon after the war has ended and in the early 1950s.
|
DIANA GARDNER, A Woman Novelist and Other Stories
(2006) WARTIME
Story collection including "The Land
Girl," about a girl from the Women's Land Army who breaks up her hosts'
marriage. Published by Persephone.
|
CATHERINE
GAVIN, Traitors' Gate (1976) RETROSPECTIVE
CATHERINE
GAVIN, None Dare Call It Treason
(1978) RETROSPECTIVE
CATHERINE
GAVIN, How Sleep the Brave (1980) RETROSPECTIVE
Historical
novelist’s popular trilogy set in wartime Britain.
|
STELLA GIBBONS,
The Rich House (1941) WARTIME
Follows several young,
mismatched couples and an anonymous letter-writer just on the cusp of the
war.
|
STELLA GIBBONS,
The Bachelor (1944) WARTIME
One of Gibbons'
darker novels, featuring an unpalatable refugee girl disrupting a family's
comfortable home life.
|
STELLA GIBBONS,
Westwood (1946) WARTIME
My favorite Gibbons,
making beautiful use of its setting in London circa 1943-1944. Bombed out
buildings and an air of fatigue powerfully evoke the late years of the war.
|
STELLA GIBBONS,
The Matchmaker (1949) POSTWAR
Set immediately
after the war, the heroine is still living with her children in the house to
which they were evacuated, and waiting for her husband to return from Germany.
|
CONSTANCE
GODDARD, Come Wind, Come Weather
(1945) WARTIME
About farm life in wartime.
|
CONSTANCE
GODDARD, Three at Cherry-Go-Gay
(1949) WARTIME
Another wartime story, this one about evacuees in
Devonshire.
|
RUMER GODDEN, An Episode of Sparrows (1955) POSTWAR
Powerful tale of
children in the postwar, making powerful use of the bombed-out buildings of
London.
|
ELIZABETH
GOUDGE, The Castle on the Hill
(1942) WARTIME
Goudge's
surprisingly complex exploration of good and evil in a wartime setting.
|
ELIZABETH
GOUDGE, Pilgrims' Inn (1948,
aka The Herb of Grace) POSTWAR
Second volume of
the Eliots trilogy, set immediately
after the end of the war.
|
FRANCES GRAY, B.U.N.C. (1938) APPROACH
Satire of industrial war
profiteering, with an eye on the coming war.
|
FRANCES GRAY, Period Piece
(1942) WARTIME
Gray's second and final
novel, a satire of immoral upper crust "parasites", presumably (but
not certainly) set in the early days of the war.
|
ELIZABETH M.
HARLAND, Farmer's Girl (1942) WARTIME
ELIZABETH M. HARLAND,
Two Ears of Corn (1943) WARTIME
ELIZABETH M.
HARLAND, Well Fare the Plough
(1946) WARTIME
ELIZABETH M. HARLAND, A Path Is There (1948) POSTWAR
Novels about farm
life during and immediately after the war, apparently based on Harland's own
experiences.
|
FRANCES HARRIS, June to September
(1941) APPROACH
Set in rural France among
Brits and French locals as war approaches.
|
MARY K. HARRIS, Gretel at St.
Bride's (1941) WARTIME
Girls' school story
featuring a student who is a refugee from the Nazis.
|
MARGARET HASSETT, Beezer's End (1949) WARTIME
Sequel to
Hassett's prewar novel Educating
Elizabeth, set in a girls' boarding school during the war.
|
CAROLYN HAYWOOD, Primrose Day
(1942) WARTIME
From the American author
of the Betsy series, the adventures of an English girl evacuated to the U.S.
|
IRENE HEATH, Good
Luck and Goodbye (1945) WARTIME
An English mother
and her two children make their way back to England from their evacuation in
the tropics on a merchant steamer.
|
ANNE HEPPLE, The North Wind Blows
(1941) WARTIME
Young woman with wrong
identity papers hides out as a Land Girl.
|
MARJORIE HESSELL TILTMAN, Mrs Morel (1942) POSTWAR
Village life
before and during the war.
|
MARJORIE HESSELL TILTMAN, Born a Woman (1951) POSTWAR
Traces the
stories of several women in Japan in the aftermath of World War II.
|
HILDA HEWETT, Kaleidoscope
(1947) WARTIME
Tale of a young
schoolteacher, taken in by a mother and her three daughters, who escape
flying bombs to an idyllic village in Worcestershire.
|
KATHLEEN HEWITT,
Lady Gone Astray (1941) WARTIME
Thriller about a young heiress who develops amnesia
after being attacked in the blackout, and copes with shady refugees.
|
KATHLEEN
HEWITT, The Mice Are Not Amused
(1942) WARTIME
Energetic tale of a legal secretary who takes a job
as head porter at an apartment building infested with fifth columnists.
|
KATHLEEN
HEWITT, Plenty Under the Counter
(1943) WARTIME
Novel about the wartime black market.
|
DIANA MURRAY
HILL, Ladies May Now Leave Their
Machines (1944) WARTIME
Novel about women factory workers in World War II.
|
LORNA HILL, Northern Lights (1999) WARTIME
One of Hill's
Marjorie stories; when she published them after the war, this one was refused
because of it's wartime themes, and was only finally published in recent years.
|
INEZ HOLDEN, Night Shift (1941) WARTIME
A powerful episodic
portrayal of life in a wartime aircraft factory.
|
INEZ HOLDEN, There's No Story There (1944) WARTIME
Rather bleak but
interesting tale set in a vast ordnance factory, where a snowstorm strands
workers for a night.
|
INEZ HOLDEN, To the Boating (1945) WARTIME
Story collection featuring several tales of wartime
life.
|
NORAH HOULT, Scene for Death (1943) WARTIME
A sort of experimental reinvention of the murder
mystery, set in an English village during the thick of the war.
|
NORAH HOULT, There Were No Windows (1944) WARTIME
Brilliant novel of an elderly woman battling
dementia during the Blitz.
|
NORAH HOULT, House Under Mars (1946) WARTIME
Dark but powerful portrait of boarding-house life in
the late years of the war.
|
ELIZABETH JANE
HOWARD, The Light Years (1990) RETROSPECTIVE
ELIZABETH JANE
HOWARD, Marking Time (1991) RETROSPECTIVE
ELIZABETH JANE
HOWARD, Confusion (1993) RETROSPECTIVE
ELIZABETH JANE
HOWARD, Casting Off (1995) RETROSPECTIVE
ELIZABETH JANE
HOWARD, All Change (2013) RETROSPECTIVE
Howard’s Cazalet
Chronicles, her best known and most popular
works, which detail a family's experiences in wartime England.
|
MARJORIE
HUXTABLE, Cherry Tree (1940) WARTIME
Romantic tale of an unhappily married woman widowed
soon after the beginning of World War II, who goes on to find new romance.
|
MARGARET ILES, Nobody's Darlings (1942) WARTIME
The effects of war and the arrival of evacuated
children on a slightly rowdy country village.
|
NORAH C. JAMES, The Gentlewoman
(1940) WARTIME
Family drama set in London
just before and after war begins.
|
NORAH C. JAMES,
The Hunted Heart (1942) WARTIME
Drama about the head of a department store and his
wife, who enters into an affair with a young soldier.
|
NORAH C. JAMES,
Enduring Adventure (1944) WARTIME
Recommended by Grant Hurlock as an entertaining
example of "blitz lit."
|
STORM JAMESON, In the Second Year (1936) APPROACH
Dystopian novel about a
Fascist takeover of England.
|
STORM JAMESON, Cousin Honoré (1940) APPROACH
Novel which attempts to examine the
causes of the war via the microcosm of a village in Alsace.
|
STORM JAMESON, Europe to Let: The Memoirs of an Obscure
Man (1940) APPROACH
A collection of novellas
about the rise of Fascism.
|
STORM JAMESON, The Fort (1941) WARTIME
Uses the form of a Greek
drama in a tale of French and English soldiers trapped in a cellar as the
Nazis approach.
|
STORM JAMESON, Then We Shall Hear Singing: A Fantasy in C
Major (1942) WARTIME
Described by Elizabeth Maslen as "a poignant
fable addressing the Czech tragedy."
|
STORM JAMESON, Cloudless May (1943) WARTIME
Novel dealing with the capitulation of France.
|
STORM JAMESON, The Journal of Mary Hervey Russell
(1945) WARTIME
Somewhat autobiographical
fictionalized diary, often considered among Jameson's best work.
|
STORM JAMESON, The Green Man (1952) RETROSPECTIVE
An epic war novel and
bestseller, tracing nearly two decades of the leadup to the war and the war
itself.
|
PAMELA HANSFORD
JOHNSON, Winter Quarters (1943) WARTIME
Focuses on an army battery stationed in a small
English village.
|
PAMELA HANSFORD
JOHNSON, An Avenue of Stone (1947) WARTIME
Set in the late war period of flying bombs and in
the immediate aftermath of the war.
|
PAMELA HANSFORD
JOHNSON, The Survival of the Fittest
(1968) RETROSPECTIVE
Novel tracing a
group of friends through the war years.
|
MARJORIE SCOTT JOHNSTON, The
Ghost in Galoshes (1941)
WARTIME
In the early days of the
war, a young woman works her way through work in journalism, publishing, and
the BBC.
|
JOSEPHINE KAMM, Nettles to My
Head (1939) APPROACH
Follows a young Jewish
woman from boarding school into adulthood as war looms in the immediate
future. Reviewed here.
|
JOSEPHINE KAMM, Peace,
Perfect Peace (1947) POSTWAR
Wonderfully
detailed novel of postwar life, focused particularly on women coping with the
transition to peactime. Reviewed here, and available
as a Furrowed Middlebrow reprint.
|
BARBARA KAYE, Home Fires Burning (1943) WARTIME
Details are lacking, but presumably a wartime tale.
|
BARBARA KAYE, Black
Market Green (1950) POSTWAR
Details lacking
here too, but I'm guessing from the title that it belongs on this list.
|
MARGARET
KENNEDY, The Feast (1950) POSTWAR
One of Kennedy’s
best novels, about a doomed hotel and its residents, which makes vivid use of
postwar conditions. Reviewed here.
|
SUSAN ALICE KERBY, Miss
Carter and the Ifrit (1945) WARTIME
A middle-aged spinster wrestling with the
deprivations of the late war years encounters a genie who helps her
rediscover the pleasures of life. Reviewed here. Available as a Furrowed Middlebrow reprint.
|
JESSIE KESSON, Another
Time, Another Place (1983) RETROSPECTIVE
A group of
Italian POWs disrupt life in an isolated Scottish village.
|
FLORENCE
KILPATRICK, Elizabeth in Wartime
(1942) WARTIME
Wartime entry in her humorous series of Elizabeth
books.
|
DOROTHY
LAMBERT, Staying Put (1941) WARTIME
DOROTHY
LAMBERT, Birds on the Wing (1943) WARTIME
Interrelated, humorous tales of home front life in
an English village.
|
MARGARET LANE, Where Helen Lies (1944) WARTIME
Romantic melodrama set against the backdrop of the
home front.
|
JOY LANGTON, Pro Tem (1945) WARTIME
Ad blurb: "An engrossing study of several sets
of people from widely different spheres who are thrown together during the
London Blitz."
|
DOROTHY M. LARGE, The Quiet Place
(1941) WARTIME
Set in an Irish mansion
turned boarding-house for those evacuating themselves from wartime dangers in
England.
|
MARGHANITA
LASKI, Love on the Supertax (1944) WARTIME
Enjoyable light tale of class, romance, and the black market.
|
MARGHANITA
LASKI, To Bed with Grand Music
(1946) WARTIME
Originally published pseudonymously, a darker tale of a young wife
whose husband is serving abroad, whose boredom leads her into a series of
affairs.
|
MARGHANITA
LASKI, Tory Heaven (1948, aka Toasted English) POSTWAR
Rollicking satire of the class system, about a group of castaways
rescued after the war, who find the old class distinctions now codified as
law.
|
MARGHANITA
LASKI, Little Boy Lost (1949) POSTWAR
Novel about a father searching for his missing son in France immediately after the
war.
|
MARGHANITA LASKI,
The Village (1952) POSTWAR
Wonderful novel about the aftermath of the war's breakdown of class relations, in the
form of two families reluctantly united by marriage.
|
D. L. LEACH, Cleveland View
(1944) APPROACH
Novel set in Yorkshire in
the days before and just after the beginning of the war.
|
WINIFRED LEAR, The Causeway
(1948) WARTIME
Tragicomic tale of life in
and around a rectory from the approach of war to the early days of the Blitz.
Reviewed here.
|
MOLLY LEFEBURE,
Blitz! (1988) RETROSPECTIVE
The one novel by
the author of Evidence for the Crown
(1954), a
memoir of working in the London morgue during WWII, dramatized a few years
ago as Murder on the Home Front.
|
ROSAMOND
LEHMANN, The Gypsy's Baby and Other
Stories (1946) WARTIME
Collection in which the war figures prominently in
several stories.
|
ROSAMOND
LEHMANN, The Echoing Grove (1953) POSTWAR
Elegant novel of
the postwar, including flashbacks to the Blitz and wartime conditions.
|
DORIS LESLIE, House in the Dust (1942) WARTIME
Novel mostly told in flashback to earlier years, but
the framing sections take place during the Blitz.
|
LORNA LEWIS, Tea and Hot Bombs (1943) WARTIME
Brilliantly detailed tale of a young girl's
experiences driving a mobile canteen in London during the Blitz. Reviewed here.
|
LORNA LEWIS, Feud in the Factory (1944) WARTIME
Young girl orphaned by a bomb fights back against
Hitler by working in a factory.
|
MARJORIE LIVINGSTONE, Moloch
(1942) WARTIME
Observer ad: "A Novel of the war as seen from both the physical and astral
planes…"
|
PHYLLIS LIVINGSTONE, In Our
Metropolis (1940) WARTIME
Cheerful novel of a young
couple in London during the Phony War.
|
NORA LLOYD, The Young Liberators (1949) WARTIME
Children's title about "an Anglo-French
family's wartime exploits in the Savoy Alps.
|
ALICE LUNT, Tomorrow the Harvest (1955) RETROSPECTIVE
ALICE LUNT, Eileen of Redstone Farm (1964) RETROSPECTIVE
Children’s
stories based on Lunt’s own experiences in the Women's Land Army during World
War II.
|
MARY LUTYENS, Family Colouring (1940) APPROACH
MARY LUTYENS, Together and Alone (1942) WARTIME
MARY LUTYENS, And Now There Is You (1942) POSTWAR
Wartime dramas
from a popular romantic novelist.
|
DOROTHY
MACARDLE, The Seed Was Kind (1944) WARTIME
Troubled young girl working with Czech refugees
during the Blitz.
|
ROSE MACAULAY,
"Miss Anstruther's Letters" WARTIME
Story based on Macaulay's own experience of being bombed out and her loss of a life's
collection of letters, books and papers.
|
ROSE MACAULAY, The World My Wilderness (1950) POSTWAR
Lovely story of Barbary, a
young girl who spent her youth with the Maquis (French resistance guerillas)
in occupied France and must now adapt to normal life among the ruins of
London. Reviewed here.
|
JEAN MACGIBBON
(as Jean Howard), When the Weather's
Changing (1945) WARTIME
Impressionistic account of farmer's wife's summer,
which John Bayley called "a pioneering book, which assimilated, with
great originality, a number of fictional genres—memoir, reportage, stream of
consciousness."
|
HELEN MACINNES,
Above Suspicion (1941) WARTIME
HELEN MACINNES,
Assignment in Brittany (1942) WARTIME
HELEN MACINNES,
While Still We Live (1944) WARTIME
HELEN MACINNES,
Horizon (1945) WARTIME
Spy novels and thrillers, all with wartime settings.
|
AVERIL MACKENZIE-GRIEVE, Sacrifice
to Mars (1940) WARTIME
Publisher's blurb:
"Novel of Nazi Germany from the inside!"
|
AVERIL MACKENZIE-GRIEVE, A Gibbet
for Myself (1941) APPROACH
Novel of the rise of
fascism in Italy, set just before to rise of Mussolini.
|
CATHERINE MACDONALD MACLEAN, Seven
for Cordelia (1941) WARTIME
CATHERINE MACDONALD MACLEAN, Three
for Cordelia (1943, aka The Tharrus
Three) WARTIME
CATHERINE MACDONALD MACLEAN, Farewell
to Tharrus (1944) WARTIME
Rather sentimental tales
of Glasgow evacuees on a farm in the Highlands.
|
ETHEL MANNIN, The Dark Forest (1945) WARTIME
Pacifist author's look
at "a tragedy born of fraternisation, one of the most highly charged
contemporary issues."
|
ADELAIDE
MANNING (w. Cyril Henry Coles, as Manning Coles), Drink to Yesterday (1940) WARTIME
ADELAIDE
MANNING (w. Cyril Henry Coles, as Manning Coles), Toast to Tomorrow (1940, aka Pray
Silence) WARTIME
ADELAIDE
MANNING (w. Cyril Henry Coles, as Manning Coles), They Tell No Tales (1940) WARTIME
ADELAIDE
MANNING (w. Cyril Henry Coles, as Manning Coles), Without Lawful Authority (1943) WARTIME
ADELAIDE
MANNING (w. Cyril Henry Coles, as Manning Coles), Green Hazard (1945)
WARTIME
ADELAIDE
MANNING (w. Cyril Henry Coles, as Manning Coles), The Fifth Man (1946)
WARTIME
ADELAIDE
MANNING (w. Cyril Henry Coles, as Manning Coles), A Brother for Hugh (1947, aka With
Intent to Deceive) POSTWAR
Light-hearted spy novels making use of wartime and
postwar intrigue.
|
OLIVIA MANNING,
Growing Up (1948) WARTIME, POSTWAR
Includes several stories written during and
immediately after the war.
|
OLIVIA MANNING,
Artist Among the Missing (1949) POSTWAR
Novel about a painter scarred by his war experiences.
|
OLIVIA MANNING,
School for Love (1951) WARTIME
A young orphan
finds love in 1945 Jerusalem.
|
OLIVIA MANNING,
The Balkan Trilogy (1960-1965) RETROSPECTIVE
OLIVIA MANNING,
The Levant Trilogy (1977-1980) RETROSPECTIVE
Two epic
trilogies—dramatized for television as Fortunes
of War—tracing a young married couple’s lives in the Eastern Europe and
the Middle East during the war years.
|
ELISABETH MARGETSON, A Stranger Beckoned (1942) WARTIME
"A modern
romance of the R.A.F."
|
ANNE MARRECO (writing as ALICE ACLAND), A Person of Discretion (1958) RETROSPECTIVE
About three
sisters from Brussels who get mixed up with the black market and the
Resistance movement late in World War II.
|
EILEEN MARSH, We Lived in London (1942) WARTIME
Enjoyable tale of a working class family during the
Blitz.
|
EILEEN MARSH, A Walled Garden (1943) WARTIME
Novel about evacuees in a village in Kent.
|
EILEEN MARSH, Eight Over Essen (1943) WARTIME
Novel about the crew of a bomber during a one week
leave.
|
ANNE MAYBURY, Arise, Oh Sun (1940) WARTIME
Romance set in
the early days of the war.
|
JACOBINE MENZIES-WILSON, September to September (1940) APPROACH
The story of a
successful country family, the Stanyons, in the year between Munich and the
beginning of the war.
|
JACOBINE MENZIES-WILSON, The Eye of a Needle (1942) WARTIME
Follows the
Stanyon family introduced in September
to September from May 1940 to January 1941.
|
JACOBINE MENZIES-WILSON, At First Light (1944) WARTIME
Set in 1942-1943, continues the story of the
Stanyons begun in September to
September and The Eye of a Needle.
|
JACOBINE MENZIES-WILSON, August at Acrelands (1946) WARTIME
Final volume in author's Stanyon family series,
taking place in 1945 with peace quickly approaching.
|
BETTY MILLER, On the Side of the Angels (1945) WARTIME
Deals powerfully with
gender roles as revealed by wartime experiences.
|
GLADYS
MITCHELL, Brazen Tongue (1940) WARTIME
Mystery set
against a backdrop of air-raid precautions and blackout in the early days of
the war. Briefly reviewed here.
|
GLADYS
MITCHELL, Sunset Over Soho (1943) WARTIME
Mystery with Dame Beatrice working as a doctor at a
shelter for air raid casualties and bombed-out refugees.
|
NAOMI
MITCHISON, The Blood of the Martyrs
(1939) APPROACH
According to ODNB, "attempted to draw parallels
between Nero's treatment of early Christians and Hitler's persecution of the
Jews."
|
NANCY MITFORD, Pigeon Pie (1940) WARTIME
A rather zany spy story
set in the earliest days of the war.
|
ALICE MOLONY, Lion's Crouch (1944) WARTIME
Children's book—"an exciting story about spies
in Cornwall."
|
ELINOR
MORDAUNT, Blitz Kids (1941) WARTIME
By turns humorous and
poignant tale about children in "The Cut" in London during the
Blitz.
|
JOAN MORGAN, Ding Dong Dell (1943) WARTIME
Novel focused on wartime refugees.
|
IRIS MORLEY, Nothing but Propaganda (1946) WARTIME
Partly autobiographical tale of a young wife
wrestling with Communist ideals and the realities of war.
|
IRIS MORLEY, Not Without Fantasy (1947) WARTIME
Also based on her real experiences as the wife of a
Moscow correspondent, this novel satirizes the life of a journalist in
wartime.
|
NORAH MYLREA, Spies at Candover (1941) WARTIME
Girls' school story set in an evacuated school.
|
DAISY NEUMANN, Now That April's There (1945) WARTIME
Beginning in early 1944, the tale of the bumpy
readjustments of two children who have just returned home after spending most
of the war in the U.S. Reviewed here.
|
BARBARA NOBLE, The House Opposite (1943) WARTIME
Novel about an
illicit love affair in London during the Blitz, with extraordinary details of
what life was like, by an author who lived through it. Reviewed here. Available as a Furrowed
Middlebrow reprint.
|
BARBARA NOBLE, Doreen (1946) WARTIME
Powerful novel (reprinted
by Persephone) about a young evacuee in World War II; makes excellent use of
Noble's interest in child psychology.
|
MARY NORTON, The Magic Bed-Knob (1943) WARTIME
MARY NORTON, Bonfires and Broomsticks (1947) WARTIME
Children's books about a nanny learning to be a
witch; the first at least takes place during the war and includes a scene in
London during the Blitz. The latter takes place partly in 1666, but also in
wartime London.
|
KATE O'BRIEN, The Last of Summer (1943) APPROACH
Social drama set during a two week period in late
summer of 1939, just as the war is beginning.
|
JANE OLIVER, The Hour of the Angel (1942) WARTIME
Set during the Blitz, with main character whose
husband is in the RAF.
|
JANE OLIVER, In No Strange Land (1944) WARTIME
Primarily an historical novel, but it ends during WWII.
|
CAROLA OMAN, Nothing to Report (1940) WARTIME
Delightful Provincial Lady-ish diary of a village
facing the early days of the war. Reviewed here. Available as a Furrowed Middlebrow reprint.
|
CAROLA OMAN, Somewhere in England (1943) WARTIME
Sequel to Nothing
to Report, showing the village now in the full swing of war. Reviewed here. Available as a Furrowed Middlebrow reprint.
|
URSULA ORANGE, Tom Tiddler's Ground (1941, aka Ask Me No Questions) WARTIME
Charming wartime tale of a young mother evacuated to
the countryside who snoops into village affairs. Reviewed here. Available as a Furrowed Middlebrow reprint.
|
URSULA ORANGE, Have Your Cake (1942) WARTIME
Humorous novel set during the war.
|
URSULA ORANGE, Company in the Evening (1944) WARTIME
Darker tale about discordant housemates during the
late years of the war and a divorced couple who bond again as a result.
Reviewed here. Available as a Furrowed Middlebrow reprint.
|
EVE ORME, There's Something About a Soldier
(1942) WARTIME
Wartime romance novel.
|
MOLLIE
PANTER-DOWNES, One Fine Day (1947) POSTWAR
Novel that evokes Woolf's Mrs.
Dalloway in lushly detailing a single ordinary day in the life of a woman
immediately after the end of the war.
|
MOLLIE
PANTER-DOWNES, Good Evening, Mrs.
Craven: The Wartime Stories (1999) WARTIME
Short stories originally published in The New Yorker, detailing the oddities
and humor of wartime situations.
|
MOLLIE
PANTER-DOWNES, Minnie's Room: The
Peacetime Stories (2002)
POSTWAR
Follow-up to Good Morning, Mrs. Craven, including
additional New Yorker stories
published after the war.
|
M. PARDOE, Bunkle Began It (1942) WARTIME
Atmospheric wartime entry in popular children's
adventure series.
|
EDITH PARGETER,
She Goes to War (1942) WARTIME
Diary-novel based on
Pargeter's own experiences in the WRNS; paints an often vivid and detailed
picture of the dangers and opportunities of war work.
|
EDITH PARGETER,
The Lame Crusade (1945) WARTIME
EDITH PARGETER,
Reluctant Odyssey (1946) WARTIME
EDITH PARGETER,
Warfare Accomplished (1947) WARTIME
Trilogy (cumulatively known as The Eighth Champion of Christendom)
which follows a young man from an
English village who experiences warfare and returns home a changed man.
|
EDITH PARGETER,
Lost Children (1951) POSTWAR
About a young
girl from an impoverished aristocratic family who falls in love with a
serviceman stationed nearby.
|
EDITH PARGETER,
Most Loving Mere Folly (1953) POSTWAR
Set "in a
bombed-out London suburb" just after the war, a tale of a married
woman's illicit love affair, threatened by the sudden death of her husband.
|
EDITH PARGETER,
Means of Grace (1956) POSTWAR
Novel about a
young soprano, living in England since the war, who returns at war's end to
her Baltic nation and witnesses turmoil and the beginnings of the Cold War.
|
EDITH PARGETER (as ELLIS PETERS), The Horn of Roland (1974) RETROSPECTIVE
Publisher blurb:
"Buried secrets from the Nazi era threaten to destroy an Austrian
composer."
|
JILL PATON WALSH, Fireweed (1969) RETROSPECTIVE
Two teenage
runaways surviving in wartime London.
|
WINIFRED PECK, Bewildering Cares: A Week in the Life of a
Clergyman's Wife (1940)
WARTIME
Hilarious
fictional diary of a rector's wife just as the anxieties of war are kicking
in. Reviewed here. Available as a
Furrowed Middlebrow reprint.
|
WINIFRED PECK, House-Bound (1942) WARTIME
Charming comedy about a woman surviving without servants in wartime Edinburgh.
|
WINIFRED PECK, There Is a Fortress (1945) WARTIME
Mostly historical, beginning just after World War I
and continuing into World War II.
|
SHEILA PIM, Common or Garden Crime (1945) WARTIME
Mystery that vividly
portrays wartime life in an Irish village. Reviewed here.
|
SHEILA PIM, Creeping
Venom (1946) POSTWAR
Charming and
funny mystery set in an Irish village, set in the final days of the war and
the gradual return of peace. Reviewed here.
|
JOCELYN PLAYFAIR,
A House in the Country (1944) WARTIME
Set in 1942, about a woman dealing with boarders and
family in the English countryside while her lover is in a lifeboat after his
boat is torpedoed.
|
DORIS POCOCK, Catriona Carries On (1940) WARTIME
Girls' story set
in the early days of the war.
|
DORIS POCOCK, Lorna on the Land (1946) WARTIME
Wartime children's book about Land Girls.
|
EVADNE PRICE, Jane the Patient (1940) WARTIME
EVADNE PRICE, Jane at War (1947) WARTIME
Wartime entries in popular series.
|
L[ILIAN].
F[AITH]. LOVEDAY PRIOR, The Valley of
Exile (1939) APPROACH
L[ILIAN].
F[AITH]. LOVEDAY PRIOR, These Times of
Travail (1941) APPROACH
Novels dealing
with the rise of fascism in the South Tyrol region of Austria.
|
MARGARET PULSFORD, Hope My Heritage (1945) WARTIME
Tragic novel
about the love affair of a young woman running a shop in wartime.
|
VIRGINIA PYE, The Prices Return (1946) POSTWAR
Follows the Price
family from some of Pye’s earlier works into the postwar, facing housing
dilemmas and other challenges. Briefly discussed here.
|
BARBARA PYM,
"Home Front Novel" (from Civil
to Strangers) WARTIME
Early short work set during the war and only
published posthumously.
|
BARBARA PYM,
"So Very Secret" (from Civil
to Strangers) WARTIME
Described by Pym as a "spy story," another
early short work.
|
BARBARA PYM, Excellent Women (1952) POSTWAR
Pym's most famous
work, a humorous tale set in and around a village church in the years
immediately after the war.
|
HAZEL PYNEGAR
& NOEL LANGLEY, Somebody's Rocking
My Dreamboat (1949) WARTIME
Cynical, adolescent tale set in 1941, about a cargo
steamer carrying a loathsome group of people trying to escape to safer
climes. Ugh.
|
DOROTHY UNA
RATCLIFFE, Mrs. Buffey in Wartime
(1942) WARTIME
Fictionalized memoir about Ratcliffe's wartime
experiences.
|
MARY RENAULT, The Friendly Young Ladies (1944) WARTIME
Matter-of-fact portrayal of a lesbian couple living
on a houseboat during World War II.
|
MARY RENAULT, The North Face (1948) POSTWAR
Novel which, according to Jenny Hartley, takes the main
character's predilection for rock-climbing as a symbol for life in the
postwar years.
|
MARY RENAULT, The Charioteer (1953) RETROSPECTIVE
Early portrayal
of gay men, dealing with a
wounded soldier's triangular relationship with a conscientious objector and a
naval officer while in a hospital in the midst of blackout and bombings.
|
MARJORIE
RICHARDS, King's Soldier (1944) WARTIME
Long novel detailing the life of a military man in
various conflicts, ending with the Battle of Britain.
|
E. ARNOT ROBERTSON,
The Signpost (1943) WARTIME
Novel about
a wounded RAF pilot and his relationship with a French woman in a remote
Irish fishing village.
|
DENISE ROBINS, Winged
Love (1941) WARTIME
Romance
novelist's wartime entry, the tale of an RAF officer's escape from France
with the French woman he loves.
|
CATHERINE ROSS, Battle
Dress (1979) RETROSPECTIVE
Written by a
former WAAF, a novel about wartime WAAF life at an airfield in the Orkneys.
Recommended for this list by Avis Judd.
|
JEAN ROSS, Women in Exile (1942) WARTIME
Largely focused on women in an English village,
including evacuees and those who have lost their homes to bombs. Reviewed here.
|
JEAN ROSS, Aunt Ailsa (1944) WARTIME
About English family life, mostly flashbacks to
earlier times, but prologue and epilogue are WWII.
|
BERTA RUCK, Jade
Earrings (1941) WARTIME
Cheerful novel
about the transformation of a Bloomsbury singer into a Land Girl in Wales.
|
BERTA RUCK, Fiancées
Are Relatives (1941) WARTIME
Romance featuring
some of the same characters as Ruck's WWI novel The Girls at His Billet (1916).
|
HARRIET RUTLAND, Blue
Murder (1942) WARTIME
Murder mystery
centered around an eccentric family and a mystery writer boarding with them.
Reprinted by Dean Street Press.
|
VITA
SACKVILLE-WEST, Grand Canyon (1941) WARTIME
Her foray into sci-fi, imagining the outcome of a German victory in the war.
|
MAUREEN
SARSFIELD, Green December Fills the
Graveyard (1945) WARTIME
Mystery set
in a partially-bombed out manor house in the late years of the war. Reprinted
with the bland title Murder at Shots
Hall. Reviewed here.
|
MAUREEN
SARSFIELD, Gloriana (1946) WARTIME
The author's only non-mystery, about the eccentric
residents of a Chelsea boarding house in 1943.
|
CONSTANCE
SAVERY, Enemy Brothers (1943) WARTIME
About a British airman who
believes that a young German prison is actually his brother, who had been
kidnapped many years before.
|
DOROTHY L. SAYERS, "The Wimsey Papers"
(1940) WARTIME
Published in the Spectator and only recently reprinted,
a series of fictional letters between Peter Wimsey, Harriet Vane, and others
of their circle, focused on the early days of the war.
|
DOROTHY L.
SAYERS, Striding Folly (1971) WARTIME
Collection of Lord Peter stories, which includes one
story written during the war.
|
MARGERIE SCOTT, The
Darling Illusion (1955) RETROSPECTIVE
Opening with a
murdered actress, whom we then see in flashback through her life, including
in London during the Blitz.
|
MARGERY SHARP, Britannia Mews (1946) WARTIME
Novel that covers a lot of ground in its heroine's
life but ends up during World War II.
|
MARGERY SHARP, The
Foolish Gentlewoman (1948) POSTWAR
Follows the
inhabitants and neighbors of a house on the outskirts of London just after
the end of World War II.
|
JANE SHAW, House of the Glimmering Light (1943) WARTIME
Popular girls' author's wartime spy story.
|
EDITH SIMON, Biting the Blue Finger (1942) WARTIME
German-born author's tale, set from the beginning of
the war to the Blitz, of a restless young woman who leaves home to work on a
barge, then at an ARP post.
|
DOROTHY EVELYN
SMITH, He Went for a Walk (1954) RETROSPECTIVE
Children’s book in which a boy made
homeless by the Blitz finds his way across wartime England.
|
MADGE S. SMITH, Peggy
Speeds the Plough (1941) WARTIME
Girls' story
about joining the Land Army.
|
STEVIE SMITH, The Holiday (1949) POSTWAR
Written in the final years
of the war, but most wartime references were removed when it finally
appeared. The novel retains a claustrophibic feel which may be explained if
one imagines it taking place late in the war.
|
NANCY SPAIN, The Kat Strikes (1955) POSTWAR
Energetic, darkly
humorous thriller set in postwar London and making use of its characters’
wartime experiences.
|
MURIEL SPARK, The Girls of Slender Means (1963) RETROSPECTIVE
Takes place in a London
boarding-house for girls during the final days of World War II.
|
ANN STAFFORD, Cuckoo
Green (1941) WARTIME
Wartime tale of a
country village in wartime from the author of Greyladies' Silver Street.
|
BARBARA
STANTON, Sweetheart of a Million
(1943) WARTIME
Wartime entry from popular romance novelist.
|
MARGUERITE
STEEN, Shelter (1942) WARTIME
Blitz novel which makes some use of the experimental
techniques of modernism.
|
D. E.
STEVENSON, The English Air (1940) WARTIME
Set in the last
days of peace and first days of war, involving an English family coping with
the approach of war and the son of a Nazi officer who visits them and has a
somewhat different perspective on events.
|
D. E.
STEVENSON, Mrs. Tim Carries On
(1941) WARTIME
Stevenson takes
her loosely autobiographical alter-ego into the early months of wartime.
Available as a Furrowed Middlebrow reprint.
|
D. E.
STEVENSON, Spring Magic (1941) WARTIME
Young woman takes her first holiday, to a fishing
village in Scotland during the war. Available as a Furrowed Middlebrow
reprint.
|
D. E.
STEVENSON, Crooked Adam (1942) WARTIME
Stevenson's foray into World War II spy novels, set
in Scotland.
|
D. E.
STEVENSON, Celia's House (1943) WARTIME
A family story beginning in 1905 and ending up in
1942. The wartime scenes are short and only at the very end of the novel.
|
D. E.
STEVENSON, The Two Mrs. Abbotts
(1943) WARTIME
Wartime entry in Stevenson's Miss Buncle series,
featuring brave soldiers, rationing, and a German parachutist.
|
D. E.
STEVENSON, Listening Valley (1944) WARTIME
Beginning in the 1930s and progressing to wartime
London and Scotland.
|
D. E.
STEVENSON, The Four Graces (1946) WARTIME
Loosely connected to The Two Mrs. Abbotts and the earlier Miss Buncle books, this
entry takes place in the final days of the war.
|
D. E. STEVENSON, Mrs.
Tim Gets a Job (1947) POSTWAR
Postwar entry in
Stevenson's popular Mrs. Tim series (and therefore a sequel of sorts to Mrs. Tim Carries On). Available as a
Furrowed Middlebrow reprint.
|
D. E. STEVENSON, Kate
Hardy (1947) POSTWAR
Set in the
immediate postwar years, about a young writer in an English village.
|
D. E. STEVENSON, Young
Mrs. Savage (1948) POSTWAR
About a young
widow with four children, recovering from the war in a Scottish village.
|
D. E. STEVENSON, Vittoria
Cottage (1949) POSTWAR
A novel of family
life in an English village in the years just after the war. Available as a
Furrowed Middlebrow reprint.
|
D. E. STEVENSON, Amberwell
(1955) RETROSPECTIVE
About a family and their
staff in a country house before and during the war.
|
D. E. STEVENSON, Summerhills
(1956) POSTWAR
Sequel to Amberwell, traces the Ayrton family
into the postwar years and includes the setting up of a boys' school.
|
D. E. STEVENSON, Sarah Morris
Remembers (1966) RETROSPECTIVE
Story of a woman looking
back over her early life, from her childhood in a vicarage to the thick of
the Blitz in London.
|
MARY STEWART, Madam, Will You
Talk? (1954) POSTWAR
Popular romantic suspense
author's debut, in which a young widow on holiday in Avignon gets mixed up in
intrigue, partly concerned with events occurring during the war.
|
MONICA
STIRLING, Lovers Aren't Company
(1949) WARTIME
Set in the final days of World War II in Italy,
based on Stirling's own experiences as a war correspondent.
|
MONICA STIRLING, Ladies with a
Unicorn (1953) POSTWAR
Glamourous tale of
filmmaking in Rome, but featuring several characters haunted by wartime
losses.
|
GRACE ZARING STONE (as ETHEL VANCE), Escape (1939) APPROACH
American author's
bestselling novel about an actress who winds up in a German concentration
camp. Stone used her pseudonym because her daughter, author Eleanor Perenyi,
was living in occupied Hungary.
|
GRACE ZARING STONE (as ETHEL VANCE), Reprisal (1942) WARTIME
American novel set in occupied France and dealing
with the Resistance.
|
LESLEY STORM, Heart of a City (1942) WARTIME
Hit play set during the Blitz.
|
LESLEY STORM, Great Day (1945) WARTIME
Members of a village Women's Institute in 1942
attempt to overcome personal and class differences to prepare for a visit
from Eleanor Roosevelt. Reviewed here.
|
NOEL STREATFEILD, The Winter Is Past (1940) WARTIME
Lovely, funny, surprisingly gritty tale of a country
house, its residents and visitors during the drab, anticlimactic days of the
"phony war". Reviewed here.
|
NOEL
STREATFEILD, The Children of Primrose Lane (1941) WARTIME
Children's adventure story written during the Blitz
and making use of wartime atmosphere.
|
NOEL
STREATFEILD, I Ordered a Table for Six (1942) WARTIME
Blitz novel tracking six individuals in the days
before they'll be together in the midst of an air raid and not all will
survive.
|
NOEL
STREATFEILD (as SUSAN SCARLETT), Summer Pudding (1943) WARTIME
One of her Susan Scarlett romances, a cheerful
comedy making use of wartime elements. Reviewed here.
|
NOEL
STREATFEILD, Harlequinade (1943) WARTIME
Children's title in which a group of circus children
are sent to the countryside to ride out the war.
|
NOEL
STREATFEILD (as SUSAN SCARLETT), Murder While You Work (1944) WARTIME
Light tale combining elements of romance and mystery
in a wartime factory setting.
|
NOEL
STREATFEILD, Curtain Up (1944, aka Theatre Shoes) WARTIME
Children's book set against a backdrop of the war.
Note that most subsequent reprints of the book edit out the war-related
content.
|
NOEL
STREATFEILD, Saplings (1945) WARTIME
Reprinted by Persephone, a powerful examination of
the ways in which the tragedies of war scar a family.
|
NOEL
STREATFEILD, Party Frock (1946, aka Party Shoes) WARTIME
Also about children living in an English village at
the very end and immediately after the war; one character's parents are in a
prison camp.
|
NOEL
STREATFEILD, Poppies for England (1946) POSTWAR
One of
Streatfeild’s Susan Scarlett romances, set just after the end of the war.
|
NOEL STREATFEILD, Beyond the
Vicarage (1971) RETROSPECTIVE
Third volume of
Streatfeild's fictionalized memoir, in which "Vicky" becomes an
author and joins the WVS during the war.
|
NOEL STREATFEILD, When the Sirens
Wailed (1974) RETROSPECTIVE
Children's fiction in
which Streatfeild returns to her wartime experiences.
|
JAN STRUTHER, Mrs. Miniver (1939) APPROACH
One of the most famous works of the pre-war years, a
series of short pieces about a family in Chelsea, later made into an
Oscar-winning film. Struther later added pieces set during the war.
|
GERALDINE
SYMONS, Now and Then (1977, published in the U.S. as Crocuses Were
Over, Hitler Was Dead)
RETROSPECTIVE
A time-slip story of a girl moving with her family
to a country estate and occasionally slipping back into World War II when she
befriends a gardener and his dog from those earlier years.
|
ETHEL M.
TALBOT, The Warringtons in War-Time
(1940) WARTIME
Children's author's foray into wartime fiction.
|
LAURA TALBOT, The Gentlewomen (1952) RETROSPECTIVE
Novel focused on
the disruptions of
class identity brought about by World War II.
|
ELIZABETH
TAYLOR, At Mrs. Lippincote's (1945) WARTIME
Taylor's first novel wonderfully evokes the fatigue
and strain of the final phase of the war.
|
ELIZABETH
TAYLOR, A View of the Harbour
(1947) POSTWAR
After erasing the
war entirely from her second novel Palladium,
Taylor presented an atmospheric glimpse of postwar life in this work.
|
ELIZABETH
TAYLOR, Complete Short Stories
(2012) WARTIME
Includes several early stories making use of wartime
concerns and settings.
|
JOSEPHINE TEY, The
Franchise Affair (1948) POSTWAR
Non-series
mystery that contains frequent mentions of the war and of postwar conditions.
|
ANGELA
THIRKELL, Cheerfulness Breaks In
(1940) WARTIME
The approach and beginning of war as hilariously
experienced in Barsetshire. A favorite of many Thirkell fans.
|
ANGELA
THIRKELL, Northbridge Rectory (1941) WARTIME
ANGELA
THIRKELL, Marling Hall (1942) WARTIME
ANGELA
THIRKELL, Growing Up (1943) WARTIME
ANGELA
THIRKELL, The Headmistress (1944) WARTIME
ANGELA
THIRKELL, Miss Bunting (1945) WARTIME
Other witty wartime entries in the Barsetshire
Chronicles.
|
ANGELA
THIRKELL, Peace Breaks Out (1946) POSTWAR
Barsetshire
chronicle tracing the transition from war back to peace in village life.
|
ANGELA THIRKELL, Private
Enterprise (1947) POSTWAR
ANGELA THIRKELL, Love
Among the Ruins (1948) POSTWAR
Subsequent Barsetshire
entries evoking immediate postwar life.
|
SYLVIA
THOMPSON, The Gulls Fly Inland
(1941) WARTIME
Set during 1939-1940, but
apparently primarily focused on interpersonal relations.
|
SYLVIA
THOMPSON, The People Opposite
(1948) POSTWAR
Deals lightly with two
postwar families, among whom is a young invalided soldier trying to get back
in the swing of things after a long hospitalization.
|
GILLIAN
TINDALL, The Intruder (1979) RETROSPECTIVE
Novel about a young Englishwoman
and her son stuck in occupied France during World War II.
|
MONICA TINDALL,
The Late Mrs Prioleau (1945) WARTIME
Young mystery writer unearths secrets about her
late, ogre-ish mother-in-law. Begins just before the war and continues well
into the war years. Reviewed here and available as a Furrowed Middlebrow reprint.
|
BARBARA EUPHAN
TODD, Miss Ranskill Comes Home
(1946) WARTIME
Reprinted by Persephone, a comedy about a woman who
has been marooned on an island and returns to find England in the thick of
war.
|
RUTH TOMALIN, The
Spring House (1968) RETROSPECTIVE
A sequel to The Garden House (1964), which took
place before the war, this volume follows Ralph and his guardian into WWII,
living in a cottage in Sussex.
|
URSULA TORDAY (as CHARITY BLACKSTOCK), The Briar Patch (1960) POSTWAR
Novel set in Paris just
after the war and featuring two teenagers, one a Holocaust survivor.
|
P. L. TRAVERS, I Go by Sea, I Go by Land (1941) WARTIME
Children's title by Mary Poppins author, dealing with evacuated children.
|
MARY TREADGOLD,
We Couldn't Leave Dinah (1941) WARTIME
About children who miss the evacuation of a
fictional Channel island (because they can't leave their horse behind) and
end up aiding the resistance to the Nazis.
|
MARY TREADGOLD, No Ponies
(1946) POSTWAR
Children's story about
France just after the war, tackling the very adult issue of Nazi
collaborators.
|
MARY TREADGOLD,
The Polly Harris (1949) POSTWAR
Sequel to We
Couldn't Leave Dinah, following that book's children into the postwar
years.
|
EILEEN
TREMAYNE, Those Who Remain (1942) WARTIME
About a London family retreating to a small village
in the early days of the war. Reviewed at Reading 1900-1950 here.
|
PRINCESS PAUL
TROUBETZKOY, The Clock Strikes
(1943) WARTIME
Dramatic novel set in a seaside town in France under
Nazi occupation.
|
FRANCES TURK, The Five Grey Geese (1944) WARTIME
Cheerful romance about five young women in the Land
Army.
|
FRANCES TURK, Candle Corner (1943) WARTIME
Romance about an RAF pilot recovering from injuries
on a farm.
|
SUSAN
TWEEDSMUIR, The Rainbow Through the
Rain (1950) WARTIME
Village story set roughly from the beginning to the
end of World War II.
|
CONSTANCE
WAGNER, The Major Has Seven Guests
(1941) APPROACH
Observer: "Intelligent thriller with good characters and dialogue, in
Fascist State on eve of war. Violet climax."
|
KATHLEEN
WALLACE, Their Chimneys Into Spires
(1939) APPROACH
About a group of Chelsea residents coping with the
approach of war.
|
KATHLEEN
WALLACE, Singing Tree (1941) WARTIME
Observer: "tells emotionally how a selfless girl loved
a boy airman whose sweetheart let him down … All very hectic."
|
KATHLEEN
WALLACE, Without Signposts (1941) WARTIME
A widow and her children retreat to the countryside
of Devon in the early days of the war, and encounter an array of fellow
evacuees.
|
E. M. WARD, Forest Silver (1941) WARTIME
E. M. WARD, Isle of Saints (1943) WARTIME
E. M. WARD, Voices in the Wind (1944) WARTIME
Atmospheric wartime tales by an author known for her
descriptions of landscape. The first is set in Westmorland, while the others
are set in Wales.
|
D. GAINSBOROUGH
WARING, This Day's Madness (1939) APPROACH
D. GAINSBOROUGH
WARING, Against My Fire (1941) WARTIME
D. GAINSBOROUGH
WARING, Hatred Herewith (1942) WARTIME
Controversial
author's thriller-ish tales of Nazis and the Secret Service.
|
SYLVIA TOWNSEND
WARNER, A Garland of Straw (1943) WARTIME
SYLVIA TOWNSEND
WARNER, The Museum of Cheats (1947) WARTIME
Two collections of stories featuring most of
Warner's wartime stories, many among her very best work. Discussed here.
|
PATRICIA
WENTWORTH, The Chinese Shawl (1943) WARTIME
PATRICIA
WENTWORTH, Miss Silver Deals With Death
(aka Miss Silver Intervenes) (1944) WARTIME
PATRICIA
WENTWORTH, The Clock Strikes Twelve
(1944) WARTIME
PATRICIA
WENTWORTH, The Key (1944) WARTIME
Entries in the popular Miss Silver mystery series,
all set against a background of war, though some make more use of this
atmosphere than others.
|
PATRICIA
WENTWORTH, The Traveller Returns
(aka She Came Back) (1945) WARTIME
Mystery which follows the drama when a woman
believed to be dead in the war returns home after three years.
|
PATRICIA
WENTWORTH, Silence in Court (1945) WARTIME
Non-Miss Silver, wartime mystery about a young girl
accused of her wealthy cousin's murder.
|
PATRICIA
WENTWORTH, The Case of William Smith
(1948) POSTWAR
Mystery featuring
prominently a returning soldier with amnesia.
|
MARY WESLEY, The
Camomile Lawn (1984) RETROSPECTIVE
"Sad, funny,
and whimsical … the story of one extended family's adventures in London
during the Blitz."
|
DOROTHY
WHIPPLE, The Priory (1939) APPROACH
Mentioned by
Delafield's Provincial Lady as perfect wartime reading; set in the final days
before the outbreak of war. Briefly reviewed here.
|
DOROTHY
WHIPPLE, Someone at a Distance
(1953) POSTWAR
Whipple’s final
novel and masterpiece, highly evocative of the postwar years as well as recalling the
characters' wartime experiences. Reviewed here.
|
DOROTHY
WHIPPLE, The Closed Door and Other Stories (2007) WARTIME
Though the title novella was published before the war,
some of the other stories were written and are set during the war.
|
ELIZABETH
WHITEHEAD, Adventurous Exile (1946) WARTIME
Children's title about a party of English
schoolgirls and teachers trapped in France during World War II.
|
BARBARA
WHITTON, Green Hands (1943) WARTIME
Energetic, optimistic novel about young women in the
Land Army.
|
MARJORIE
WILENSKI, Table Two (1942) WARTIME
Rare novel about a group of women translators in the
Ministry of Foreign Intelligence. Reviewed here. Available as a Furrowed Middlebrow reprint.
|
BARBARA WILLARD, The
Dogs Do Bark (1948) POSTWAR
Ironic family
story set at a seaside resort just after the war.
|
BARBARA WILLARD, Celia
Scarfe (1951) RETROSPECTIVE
The story of a
schoolmistress who has a child out of wedlock and allows him to be adopted,
but for whom the war provides a unique opportunity.
|
BARBARA WILLARD, Echo
Answers (1952) POSTWAR
Woman whose lover
was killed in the war becomes entangled with a theatrical family.
|
MARGUERITE
WILLIAMS, Be Merry, My Dear (1942) WARTIME
Wartime conflict between "an amiable journalist
of talent and his too independent schoolmistress wife" (Observer).
|
DESEMEA WILSON
(as DIANA PATRICK), Life Is to Seek
(1940) WARTIME
Romantic novel
about young people in the early days of WWII, by the mother of Romilly Cavan.
|
VIRGINIA WOOLF,
Between the Acts (1941) APPROACH
Highly
experimental novel about a village pageant, over which the threat of war
looms in subtle and symbolic ways.
|
VIRGINIA WOOLF,
"Thoughts on Peace in an Air Raid" WARTIME
One of her final essays, originally appearing in The Death of the Moth and Other Essays
(1942) but often reprinted in other collections.
|
ESTHER TERRY WRIGHT,
Pilot's Wife's Tale (1942) WARTIME
Lightly fictionalized diary of life with her pilot
husband during World War II, including his recovery from injuries sustained
in the Battle of Britain.
|
ESTHER TERRY WRIGHT, The Prophet Bird (1958) POSTWAR
Novel about a middle-class couple struggling in the
postwar years.
|
PAMELA WYNNE, Pineapple Place (1946) WARTIME
Romance novel centered on the residents of a hotel
in the English countryside during the war.
|
E. H. YOUNG, Chatterton Square (1947) APPROACH
Tale of the inhabitants of a town square in the late
1930s, as war looms before them. Recently released in paperback and e-book as
one of the inaugural titles in the British Library Women Writers series.
|
WOW@! So many favorites here, and some new (to me) titles by favorite authors, especially Noel Streatfeild! Many thanks. Scott, for a non-Miss Silver wartime Wentworth, try "Silence in Court."
ReplyDeleteThanks again, my only sad thought here is - right now, I have no access to libraries to find most of these! DRAT! BUT - time to reread the shelves! Starting with Streatfeild's "The Winter is Past."
Thanksk again,
Tom
Tom, you are right. Silence in Court is now my favorite non-Miss Silver mystery by Patricia Wentworth. Thank you for the recommendation. And a LOT of WWII influence.
DeleteJerri
Thank you Tom and Jerri (hee hee). I had no idea about Silence in Court. I will give it a try and add it to my list when I revise!
DeleteAn Amazing new list - I hope lots more of these turn into Furrowed Middlebrow reprints.
ReplyDeleteWell done on all that work.
I hope you both and your families and friends are all keeping fit and well as we get ourselves through this very strange time.
Thank you Sue! Hope you're doing well too (and getting lots of reading done!).
DeleteAmazing list. I'm surprised to find how many of these books I've read but a lot of titles are new to me.
ReplyDeleteThank you for the hard work you must have put into this; it's a great source now.
Thanks Barbara, and be sure to let me know if there's anything I missed. I should be able to update this one more frequently than every five years!
DeleteWhat a great new list (or updated list version). I haven't had the time to go through it in detail, but I am confident that I will find lots of things to add to my TBR pile/list.
ReplyDeleteThank you Scott for all your efforts. By the way, I managed to find the time to read one book on the list, The Foolish Gentlewoman. On the whole I enjoyed it, but was a bit disappointed at the portion of the ending that applied to the young female companion. I thought the other characters had endings that were suitable for them, but I thought she was short changed. I hope that after the book ends that character finds a Happy Ending of some sort.
Jerri
Thanks Jerri! I'm glad you liked Foolish Gentlewoman. I think I particularly liked the ending because they all seemed entirely realistic and un-idealized, particularly for that immediate postwar period. Like Sharp just couldn't romanticize everything after all that had happened.
DeleteWorking my way down (and up) your list, I was reminded of Harriet Rutland. I had bought the Dean Street Press versions of her three mysteries a while back (it looks like 2015!) and read the first two, Knock Murderer, Knock and Bleeding Hooks soon thereafter, but somehow had never gotten around to her war time mystery, Blue Murder. A very cleaver mystery novel, with plenty of WWII background worked into it. However, as the introductions say, darker than the other two and without the continuing series characters. The ending is quite something, unconventional, unusual and disturbing. In some ways it reminded me of Heyer's darkest mystery, Penhallow, which was written during the war but obviously either set before the war or in an alternative England without WWII. Both were published in 1942. Both are disturbing, although with some dark humor, both focus on a dysfunctional family, both share another plot element which I can't mention due to spoilers. It would be interesting to read a comparison and contrast essay on the two.
ReplyDeleteThank you for this list, as I might never have remembered to go back and read Blue Murder. (And I can't figure out the meaning of the title. I wonder what I am missing.)
Jerri
Strangely, Jerri, I think I did the same as you. I've read the first two, but not the third. It sounds intriguing despite the darkness. I wonder if it might have been the darkness of the time that influenced both authors?
DeleteWhat about Madam, Will You Talk? by Mary Stewart for a Postwar book. Written and set in 1955, while it all takes place in France it is one of the first books to make plain to me that rationing was so extreme in England after the war. (The joke the two youngish Englishwomen on holiday in France make about being served real meat near the beginning of the book is wonderful.) Also, the plot of the mystery involves the treatment of the Jews during WWII. Her first novel, and very much a function of that time and place.
ReplyDeleteJerri
Thanks Jerri, I'll add it to my list of titles to add!
DeleteThis list is such a treat! I want all of them. I echo Jerri's suggestion of Madam, Will You Talk? (alas, my mother and I were going to trace Charity's steps in May - I hope we can reschedule our trip). I know this list is for British authors but I have to mention part of Elswyth Thane's Williamsburg novels. After the first two in the series, they are primarily set in England. The Light Heart is set before and during WWI and deals with an English girl marrying a Prussian while the next book, Kissing Kin, ends in 1934. But This Was Tomorrow and Homing are both set during WWII. I love this author so much I can't help buying duplicates - I may have to send Scott my extra copies so he becomes a fan. Thane was from Iowa but never looked back once she got to NYC - changed her name and married the Jacques Cousteau of his day, William Beebe.
ReplyDeleteTo wet your appetite for tracing Charity's footsteps, you might read about a person taking a similar journey, at the Mary Queen of Plots web site:
Deletehttps://marystewartreading.wordpress.com/2017/03/28/in-avignon/
Jerri
So much richness here!!! I adore Barbara Pym. And DE Stevenson's novels are very much on my mind these days - I think about what the Brits went thru, with food shortages, and everything else they had to endure.
ReplyDeleteA bit late to the party, I've been meaning to write with a suggested title since, well, April 2nd. Anyway, here 'tis: Experiment in Springtime by Margaret Millar, published in 1947 by Random House. Her first novel outside the mystery genre, it concerns an unhealthy marriage and the return of the wife's ex-fiancee from the war. Millar was a Canadian, of course, but she did live most of her life in the United States, so I'm guessing she qualifies. Either way, I do recommend the novel. If interested, here's my review: Experiment in Springtime.
ReplyDeleteKeep up the good work! And stay safe!
Scott, Agatha Christie's Taken at the Flood has also been titled There is a Tide. That's the title of my US paperback.
ReplyDelete