Never a dull moment (get it?): MARGERY SHARP, The Stone of Chastity (1940) and Four Gardens (1935)

Back in November of 2013 (it doesn't seem possible that it's been so long), well before I ever dreamed I'd be doing anything more than fantasizing about publishing, I did a post here listing 20 books I felt should be in print but weren't. The post is hopelessly outdated now, and I can very proudly and happily say that it's partly outdated because of me. As of January, when our next batch of Furrowed Middlebrow books are released by Dean Street Press, I will have been responsible for no fewer than eight of those 20 titles being reissued (and it's just possible that I'm not finished yet). Of the remaining 12, at least five more have now been reprinted by other publishers.

And one of my favorites of all of these is undoubtedly Margery Sharp's delightful 1940 novel The Stone of Chastity. Sharp wrote lots of wonderful books, and I've written about a number of them here. I'm pleased as punch, as I've already noted here, that we're publishing six of her criminally neglected early novels in January, but Stone holds a special place in my heart as perhaps the daftest and most purely joyful and silly of all of Sharp's work, and it's truly bizarre that it hasn't been reprinted long before now. In 2018 in the New York Times, scholar and author Perri Klass named Stone, along with better-known Sharp classics Cluny Brown, The Eye of Love, Britannia Mews, and The Nutmeg Tree, as the five titles in her Sharp "starter kit", calling it a "bucolic comic masterpiece." I can't disagree!

"It's in my mind to put an end to this heathen wickedness that's stalking abroad through Gillenham. It's in my mind to terrify that evil man from his morrow's sinful doings."

 

"We'll be going to Old Manor, then?"

 

"Not yet," said Mrs. Pye grimly. "We go first to the village. To rouse the women ... "

The novel opens with Professor Isaac Pounce, freshly arrived in the idyllic country village of Gillenham, along with his sister-in-law, his young nephew Nicholas, and Carmen, his voluptuous assistant, who seems quite well-paid for doing no one is quite sure exactly what. The Professor is in hot pursuit of a legendary Stone of Chastity, reference to which he has stumbled across in an old diary. The stone was one of those placed as stepping stones in the local stream, and the legend went that no unvirtuous woman could cross the stream without losing her balance at this particular stone and getting a dowsing.

Professor Pounce is cold-bloodedly scientific in his approach, but his researches, including a survey distributed to all villagers and a plan to put all the village women to the test and record the results for posterity, arouses not unforeseeably hostility among the more pious-minded locals, particularly the Vicar's wife, who enlists the Boy Scouts to help suppress his efforts, and stern Mrs. Pye, a moralizer who might have given Savonarola a run for his money.

Ultimately, it's aimless young Nicholas, popular at Cambridge but without much ambition since, who must attempt to assuage the villagers' outrage. In the process, his own amorous impulses get directed first in the direction of Carmen, who when not helping his uncle works as a nude model for artists, then toward the Vicar's perky daughter, and finally toward a Bloomsbury composer staying in the village, who enthusiastically volunteers for the Professor's study. We also meet numerous other villagers, both in favor of the professor and against him, though my favorite by far is the unflappable Mrs. Jim, who runs the local pub and commiserates with Nicholas after he sours on the promiscuous Carmen:

"As a matter of fact, I suppose I was a bit of an ass about her…"

 

Mrs. Jim looked at him kindly.

 

"Like stealing jam, ain't it? You feel a bit sickish afterwards."

 

"That's it exactly. Especially … "

 

"Especially," finished Mrs. Jim, "when there's so many others have had their fingers in the same pot." Nicholas felt slightly sick in truth.

 

"You don't know how you could have done it," he said, "afterwards, when you wish you hadn't."

 

"I shouldn't let it worry you," said Mrs. Jim. "I don't suppose it was more than kissing behind doors, and where there's a door handy and a piece like her behind, no young man's to be blamed. Jam's jam."

Of course, the entire concept of women's chastity and society's concern for it is a profoundly misogynistic one, but have no fear, as Sharp has tongue firmly in cheek throughout, and by the end of the novel manages to delightfully undercut the whole concept. One would expect no less.

Although it's complete coincidence that I got round to writing about the two novels in this post at the same time, it's an interesting juxtaposition, for while The Stone of Chastity is probably Sharp's most pure farce, with nary a thing to take seriously from beginning to end, Four Gardens is probably the most restrained and emotional work of Sharp's early career. So get ready to switch gears…

The old names still echoed in her ears, drawing her thoughts back and back, past Lily and Leonard, past Henry, to even shadowier figures yet. Cousin Maggie Platt, who had money in Consols; Ellen Taylor, so fortunately an orphan; and Vincent in the terraced garden, and her own widowed mother, with that striking resemblance (though from the back view only) to Alexandra Princess of Wales…

As Four Gardens opens, we meet happy middle-aged Caroline Smith (née Chase), receiving birthday presents from her children, Lily and Leonard, and her devoted husband Henry. Her reflections on their gifts lead her to reflections about her earlier life, and soon we are back in the village of Morton as young Caroline and her widowed mother make their way towards an evening church service. However, not unusually, we are given to understand, Caroline hesitates and her mother asks her if perhaps she has a headache and should take a walk around the common rather than attend services. Caroline acquiesces, but instead of the common, she makes off to an abandoned house and garden which has caught her imagination. She has a passion and instinct for gardening and a love of the earth.

This lush but neglected and overgrown garden is the first of the four gardens which represent the stages of Caroline's life. This one, along with the young man she meets there, who awakens her romantic feelings but is ultimately of too high a class for her (this is Victorian England, after all!), represents perhaps her naïve, youthful dreams of simple happy endings. Instead, Caroline's life moves ahead, and she marries Henry Smith, who is devoted to her and whom she loves but is not in love with, an ambitious shoe factory assistant. They settle into a quiet little house, have two children, and make their way contentedly, despite the lack of anything more than a tiny garden, which Caroline at any rate has little time to think of.

Of course, ambitious Henry makes good, particularly with the arrival of World War I and the resulting increased demand for boots. Their fortunes rise, and soon Caroline has a much larger home with a lavish garden—this one too large to manage without a gardener, who takes charge of it all and ignores Caroline's suggestions and advice, thereby depriving even such lushness of any deep pleasure for her. She's now in the realm of keeping up appearances and moving in "Society", however uncomfortably. One of the funniest passages in this distinctly un-riotous Sharp novel is that in which Caroline goes to view the house Henry has selected for them, complete with its imposingly regal departing owner: 

She announced herself, rather self-consciously, as Mrs. Henry Smith, and he replied that Mrs. Cornwallis was expecting her. To Caroline, following him through a wide shabby hall, the whole episode was beginning to feel like a nightmare. She was intensely conscious of herself-of her dress, her voice, the way she placed her feet. She felt like a cook-general going to be interviewed.

 

"Mrs. Henry Smith," said the butler contemptuously.

It's hard to imagine that the butler was really contemptuous (or at least that he revealed it in his manner of speaking) but of course it's dead on that Caroline, feeling awkward and out of place, would have perceived that he was.

I can't say anything much about Caroline's fourth garden because I don't want to give away the ups and downs of her story once the flashbacks are through. But suffice it to say it may be the most satisfying of all.

Four Gardens is by far the most sentimental of the Margery Sharp novels I've read, and I have a troubled relationship with sentimentality. But Caroline is such a charmer, tough and sensible beneath her rather passive and insecure exterior, that it was impossible to resist, and I have to confess to having tears in my eyes at more than scene (don't tell anyone). She is anything but a feminist, assuming along with her mother that her husband must always be right, but we do see a progression in her as the story progresses, and her attitude toward Leon and Lal when they are grown and romance in the air shows a plucky openmindedness. It's in these young characters, with their modern attitudes and bohemian sensibilities coming into gentle conflict with Caroline, that we get a taste, in later sections of the book, of more typical Margery Sharp storytelling and a bit of her usual comic relief. 

There's also a lovely, balanced summing-up of Morton's reactions to the outbreak of war:

On August the fifth a booking-clerk at Morton Station, leaving his post to distribute cigarettes among a trainload of Territorials, was arrested as a spy and marched off to the police station. A troop of Boy Scouts, guarding the railway bridge, arrested an ex-colonel and one of the linesmen. An elderly stockbroker, flying a kite for his son on Morton Common, was arrested on the charge of signaling to the enemy. The German Charcuterie, owned by a Welshman named Evans, had its windows broken and its stock scattered in the street.

 

Also on August the fifth the local M.P. and his wife moved out of their house on the Common and handed it over for the use of the Red Cross. Dr. French threw up a now flourishing practice to join the R.A.M.C. Mr. Brodie, the estate-agent, who was forty-five if a day, enlisted in the London Scottish. The youngest Macbeth boy enlisted as a private. Every shop in the High Street was out of khaki wool. A first collection for Belgian refugees brought in seven thousand five hundred and eighty pounds. In this manner—in these manners—Morton confronted the fact of war.

As I mentioned in my announcement post, two of my fellow bloggers have also written enthusiastically, several years ago (I'm late to the party as usual), about Four Gardens—Barb at Leaves and Pages here, and Jane at Fleur in Her World (now at Beyond Eden Rock) here.

So there, two quite different sides of Margery Sharp, both from the first third or so of her career, but both quite delightful and informed by Sharp's incomparable instincts as a storyteller!

RACHEL FERGUSON, A Harp in Lowndes Square (1936)

It should have been a profoundly humorous sight. I can only say that it was beastly, for I knew in my heart that this furious pursuit wasn't the first; that once there were those who ran before her as I was running, and one who could not run so fast ... what she had done then I don't ever wish to know, and try not to think of.

I love it when a favorite author challenges my assumptions and expectations of their work, and this eerie quotation from Rachel Ferguson's sixth novel, A Harp in Lowndes Square (published the year before Alas, Poor Lady, which is available from Persephone) may give at least an inkling of just how surprising this book was. I'm calling it Ferguson's version of a ghost story, though like most of her novels its genre takes a back seat to her completely unique authorial voice and the peculiar depths of its plot. What's more, it is one of her most serious and passionate works, despite being leavened now and then with her usual hilarity.

The story begins with a short, eerie prologue, the significance of which one only fully realizes at the end of the book (I won't spoil it, of course, but I highly recommend immediately circling back to it when you finish the novel). A child, Anne, in her dingy bedroom at the top of a large house, hears noises downstairs late at night and wonders who it could be:

It leaves us speculating upon what Anne, the woman, would have made of that evening in Lowndes Square, when—still the younger Miss Vallant—she peered over those banisters and heard a young, unknown man and woman many flights below, and warmed to the voices of her son and daughter who were to be.

That's right. There's something about this unusual family that allows its members, in varying ways, to perceive the sights, sounds, and emotions of other times, and here Anne is warming to the voices of her future children (though what exactly they're doing in the old family home in the middle of the night you'll have to find out for yourself).

This family proclivity is particularly pronounced in said son and daughter, twins Vere and James, who have "the sight," which enables them to witness and even re-experience scenes from other times (including, on one memorable and startling occasion at Hampton Court, seeing Henry VIII and young Edward VI discussing tennis and eating apples). And they're not only sensitive to events from other times, but to each other's experiences: Vere experiences befuddlement and dulled senses when James gets drunk for the first time, and James experiences discomfort when Vere is on dates with young men. Vere, the narrator of the novel, also notes the suffering of houses as a result of neglect, the hidden emotions of furniture, and the echoes of past dances in ballrooms!

But it is ultimately their own family history which becomes the twins' obsession, as well as their most vivid and painful experience with the ghosts of the past. It begins with a curiosity about their mother's tortured relationship with her own mother, the formidable and apparently heartless Lady Vallant, who gleefully torments her servants as well as her family. And when the twins question their little-known aunts (the family is not close-knit, to say the least), they hear for the first time about Myra, "the aunt who died," "that shadow of whose very existence our own mother had never told us." Their curiosity is aroused, and they are on their way, determined to uncover the history behind their mother's silence.

Giving you a sort of scoop (in lieu of any pics of Harp's original
dustjacket), here's the artwork, by Danish painter Peter Ilsted,
that we plan to feature on the Furrowed Middlebrow edition of the novel.
I think it's wonderfully evocative, with just a touch of eerieness?

If that sounds rather straightforward, however, it isn't quite. This is, after all, a Rachel Ferguson novel, and so there are numerous entertaining digressions, distractions, and ramblings. World War I begins, though it figures little in the story apart from explaining James's absence for long periods and allowing a tighter focus on Vere's experiences. We get a preview of Ferguson's subsequent novel, Alas, Poor Lady, in the sad figure of Miss Chilcot, the family's old governess, a downtrodden gentlewoman whom Vere tracks down dying of starvation and neglect in a hospital. And then there's Vere's strange, more-or-less platonic relationship with an aging actor (and his wife), which is certainly a unique Ferguson touch.

But the center of the novel is the dreadful Lady Vallant and the sad, mysterious Myra. Of all the terrible mothers portrayed in the fiction of this time, Lady Vallant must stand as one of the towering figures of maternal monsterdom, and unlike some novels (including Monica Tindall's marvelous The Late Mrs Prioleau, which I wrote about here not long ago), there is little in Harp to explain or justify her cruelty, so that the reader is left wondering at her and trying to fathom her mindset.

Perhaps it's because of the pain and sadness Vere and James uncover that Harp feels, despite occasional moments of hilarity, surprisingly serious for a Rachel Ferguson novel. She was daft and silly in earlier works like The Brontës Went to Woolworth's, and she would be daft and silly again with A Footman for the Peacock. But perhaps Harp allowed Ferguson to tap into more personal, deeper concerns. That said, though, when her sense of humor presents itself, it's just as charming as ever, as when Vere and James are told that Lady Vallant keeps her servants on "board wages" and don't quite understand:

Board wages certainly sounded bleak, and for some time we all believed it meant sleeping on a plank.

Here as elsewhere, Ferguson is interested in class distinctions, though she also shows considerable interest in and sensitivity with the servants, as when Vere visits the "downstairs" areas of Lady Vallant's house:

He led me down to the rooms I had never seen. I asked to see the kitchen and was shown it. The warren of sitting-rooms and pantrys was small and freakishly ventilated; some of them, including the larders, had no windows at all and gas light burnt there all the year round, they told me. Furniture obviously taken from the upper floors made the staff comfortable enough and I saw that the dining table of the upper servants, still covered with breakfast things, sported an imposing array of our family silver. The cook was drinking a jorum of tea out of a cup that looked uncommonly like Crown Derby. And I said nothing: neither did Hutchins, for which I respected him. If you appropriate, do it in the grand manner. And that underworld of men and women, the majority of whom had so far only materialized to me as a row of decorous behinds at dining-room prayers, emerged as human beings, and I think we pleased each other reasonably well. Their laws of precedence, I knew, were tricksy, but I managed to make only two mistakes: confused the upper with the under housemaid and 'spoke' to the kitchenmaid who is, socially, dumb.

But as someone who occasionally wrestles with social anxieties of my own, my favorite passage, and the one that made me laugh the most, is Ferguson's suggestion for shocking oneself out of one's worries:

I once knew a man who cured himself of melancholia by putting £200 out of a Bank balance of £350 on the Derby. His action so shocked him that it drove away his bogeys, and a girl we all know, on being presented at Court, was so ill with nerves that she nearly fainted; she was on the verge oflosing consciousness and just managed to lean forward to some dowager sitting by her daughter and to stammer, quite untruly, 'I think your dress is fussy and unbecoming'. In the whispered melee that followed the faintness was forgotten for the whole evening.

Ferguson is always interesting in her turns of phrase, sometimes incorporating the contemporary parlance of the day that might otherwise be lost. Two things struck me along these lines in this novel. First, there is a reference to the "maroons" sounding before an air raid; has anyone else ever heard this term for sirens? A Google search brings up one or two such usages, but it seems to not have been a common one?

And then there's this offhand comment from Vere: "The story, as Americans say 'listened badly', and I knew it." Do Americans say such things?! I have to admit that, though I've never heard this expression, I do rather like it and may have to start using it in conversation. So perhaps there is something about it that appeals to Americans…

At any rate, some of you will recall that I announced not long ago that the Furrowed Middlebrow imprint will be reprinting three of Ferguson's best (in my humble opinion) novels this October, and Harp is one of those three. I was already excited enough about that, but in putting together that edition, we discovered that no less a figure than Gillian Tindall, acclaimed novelist and historian (and, relevent to readers of this blog, daughter of Ursula Orange), published a short piece about Ferguson in the Literary Review at the time of Persephone's release of Alas, Poor Lady. In that piece, Tindall not only speaks enthusiastically about Ferguson in general, but particularly singles out A Harp in Lowndes Square as one of her most intriguing works. She ends by noting, "I wish someone would reissue this book." (!!)

Think of this post, then, as a preview of coming attractions. A Harp in Lowndes Square is a unique and rather tragic entry in Ferguson's wildly varied body of work, and I'm delighted that others will now have a chance to read it.

ELIZABETH COXHEAD, A Play Toward (1952)

In the past couple of months, I've been—in my chaotic, excruciatingly slow fashion—gradually compiling yet another list, the idea of which I first mentioned here at least six months ago. This is a list of novels written for adults but set in schools, a genre that has been of interest to me ever since I read (and raved about) Mary Bell's only novel, Summer's Day, back in the early days of this blog. I've still not found another title to really compete with Bell's lovely little masterpiece, but I have accumulated a fairly significant list of similarly-themed novels, and lately it seems that I'm dead set on working my way through every title on it. Only recently, I reviewed Eileen Helen Clements' Cherry Harvest, set in an evacuated girls' school during World War II. And in the near future I have reviews of at least two more very, very different novels with similar settings. (Hopefully, at some point I'll actually finish and post the list too...)

When I added Elizabeth Coxhead to my Overwhelming List not long ago, and came across a blurb about A Play Toward describing it as the tale of a grammar school production of A Midsummer Night's Dream, I knew I would need to check it out. It sounded distinctly odd, and you must know by now that odd is almost always a selling point for me.

Odd it certainly is, though it's also a rather puzzling novel to write about. It has some incredibly lovely moments, rather interesting (if not terribly sympathetic) characters, and intriguing situations. But unlike the production described in the novel, which takes advantage of a lovely setting and some lucky breaks and becomes quite magically successful, the tale of that production never fully came together for me.

It's certainly trying to say something, in its odd, charming way, and surely that something has to do with class and elitism. The focus is on Madeleine Littlejohn—the wife of the grammar school's headmaster and also a former teacher at the school, who was forced to retire when they married but who maintains an interest in the school including, currently, producing the school play—and on her daughter Sophia, who is a bit of a problem child, smart but rather delicate and rather emotionally needy.

Madeleine is hyper-aware of her own social position and those of others, who include the likeable Lady Bannister and her hideous children, who represent the "society" of the village; the hideous social-climbing Mrs. Goadby and her poor inept daughter; Helen Marvin, a schoolteacher with her own distinct brand of elitism; and Lancelot Dixon, another teacher and also a former student of Madeleine's husband, who has now gotten himself tangled in an unhealthy relationship with a distinctly low class unmarried mother. These relationships and their various tensions and entanglings play out against the backdrop of preparations for the school's play, but just what exactly they suggest about class relations overall remains a mystery.

But there are, as I mentioned, some beautiful moments, and these alone may be worth the price of admission. Indeed, the novel's opening made me feel certain I had found a new favorite, and I have to share it with you at some length:

When she lay down in the field, Sophia could only see the delicate fretwork of grasses and cow-parsley, cut out against the hot blue sky. When she raised herself on her elbows, her mother came into view, slender and shadowed in the big garden-hat, her face bent seriously over the copy of the play. And when she sat right up, she could see half the Midlands.

For the field was the brow of Dane's Hill, whence the invaders had looked out from their island fortress of Alney over leagues of swamp and fen. The fen was drained and fertile now, though it only needed a few weeks of winter rain to flood the land between Alney and Midchester and remind the cocky Midlanders how superficial were the changes they had imposed on it through the centuries. Immediately at the hill's foot spread the dark carpet of the Alney Woods, and they were a link with primeval forest; in their recesses lurked the fear and mystery of very ancient things.

All three attitudes gave Sophia an exquisite pleasure. Here she was in a hot summer field, hot suddenly, overnight, for it was early May and had been winter till yesterday. Here she was on a sort of picnic, with pale Shrewsbury biscuits in a little basket, while other children toiled in school. Here she was assisting in the laying of important plans. And she always experienced a sense of release, like the opening of a great window, at finding herself on the Danes' lookout, with that immense coloured pattern of fields and woods spread beneath her. Fourteen church spires there were, visible on a clear day; that was, if you had noble eyesight like her father, and if you hadn't, you pretended.

Endless -bys and -thorpes had the Danes left behind them. First, beyond the band of the woods, came Glooby, then Fenthorpe, with the pimple of a hill that made it easy to pick out; then Winterby; then in a great sweep, Thursby and Knarehampton and Ratburn, where the lunatic asylum was (unfailing source of local witticism) ; and beyond that again the spires that one could only guess at, Petton Parva, and Wentworth Waterless, and, delicious thought, Benenden-in-the-Beans .... Half the Midlands shimmered there, right away to Midchester and beyond. To Sophia all the world was Midland. Her brief outside journeyings were merely pages from a picture book. The true world was made up of stocking factories and high red-brick farmhouses, of curtsying elms and fields broadly pleated with ancient ploughings; and up here on Dane's Hill, it was hers.

Re-reading this passage now, I still find myself sighing at such evocative scene-setting mixed with such a compelling introduction to Sophia, and I wish the rest of the novel had fully lived up to it.

Sophia is on this sort of picnic outing with her mother "while other children toiled in school" because she her parents have been ordered to keep her out of school and away from her compulsive reading for the sake of her health. In lieu of intellectual stimulation, Sophia is ordered to "run wild," which indeed she tries to do at times, but ultimately she always winds up squarely back in the middle of her growing intellectual ferment, as when—shortly after the foregoing—she quotes a passage of poetry for Madeleine and shares what she has learned of it from her father:

"Daddy says that's the most musical line in English poetry," she suddenly announced aggressively.

"M'm," said Madeleine, abstracted.

"He was explaining to me. The way the a-sound in fades is echoed in the 'scape—"

"M'm," agreed Madeleine; and then, attending: "But you know, darling, I believe Gray said -skip." Sophia was disconcerted. That was the worst of belonging to a learned household. People were continually bringing out bits of information which upset your previously formed, and therefore sacred, opinions. Her mother and father ought to agree together beforehand, and not go putting on her the burden of decision between them. Her mother, having launched this phonetic thunderbolt, seemed again to have forgotten her.

I loved this portrayal of a youngster trying to shore up her knowledge. Later, Sophia is scolded by her father yet again for reading when she is supposed to be running wild, and she defends herself by noting that she is not reading trash but rather an article by Arthur Conan Doyle about the true existence of fairies (if you follow this link, be sure to check out the clip from Antiques Roadshow with the daughter of one of the young girls' who originally faked the photos). 

Fairies at the bottom of the garden indeed!

Although in retrospect there were earlier clues to which I was oblivious, this was the point at which I frowned and noted that, however subtly revealed, the novel was clearly not set in the 1950s but in the years immediately after World War I. The fact that Coxhead allows her novel to go on for quite some time with only subtle clues to the time period before finally—nearly halfway through her tale—spelling out its historical setting explicitly, is one of the things I found most interesting here, though again I can't quite explain the purpose of such subtlety to the larger themes she's tackling.

Ultimately, the novel did, for me, get a bit bogged down in the melodrama of Helen's tormented romantic urges and Lancelot's sordid past and relationship, especially since neither of those characters ever seemed to come fully alive in the way that Sophia did. For it was Sophia—even as much of a problem child as she is when being brutally ill-tempered toward her younger brother—who made the novel worthwhile for me, and surely, too, her willingness to eschew the class distinctions her mother takes so seriously plays into Coxhead's themes, as when she tells kind Lady Bannister exactly what she thinks of her daughter:

"Your daughter's in the play, isn't she, Mrs.Goadby?" Lady Bannister said. "I hear she has a lovely dress. I'd hoped to bring my Lorna, but I'm afraid she's at the stage when her pony means more to her than Shakespeare.''

"She's my age," observed Sophia bluntly, right across Mrs. Goadby. "It's nothing to do with her age that she doesn't like Shakespeare. It's because she's awful. I can't think how such a nice person as you comes to have such an awful child, Lady B." Really, there was no knowing what these Littlejohn children would say next! A nice advertisement for the School!

Lady Bannister, however, took it in good part, and merely expressed the hope that Sophia and her daughter would be better friends as they grew older.

"Much worse, I'm certain," said Sophia darkly. "I can imagine Lorna grown-up—" Mrs. Goadby fortunately remembered she had bought some chocolates at the sweet-stall, and produced them now in an effort to stem so unsuitable a conversation.

If A Play Toward, despite such memorable scenes, is unlikely to become a favorite, it was still interesting enough to make me rather intrigued by Elizabeth Coxhead. Coxhead's earlier novel, One Green Bottle, is discussed here, and it may just have to go onto my TBR list, if only out of curiosity as to what she might make of such a different kind of plot.

And of course, there are still quite a number of other school stories for adults left to explore. Perhaps there's still one out there to give Mary Bell a run for her money...

THE WAR LIST (version 3.0)

Really, this is getting ridiculous.

Had I known when I started this mini-project—to create a short list (short being, as always with me, a relative term) of only the women from my Overwhelming List who had published significant works about World War I or World War II—just how difficult the project was going to turn out to be, and how many embarrassing omissions I was going to find not only from the first draft of the list, which was understandable enough, but from even the significantly revised second draft which I posted a few weeks ago, I might have just left well enough alone.

But alas, fools rush in, and now I'm obsessed with trying to dot all the i's and cross all the t's. So I've now made a third major overhaul to the War List, which you can view in its entirety here.

The new additions are overwhelmingly World War II-related, as I have also been working (glutton for punishment as I am) on a list of texts concerning that war, subdivided by category and minus all my endless blubbering about each author. That list will, I hope, appear soon, but in the process of working on it I discovered a whole slew—and in this case a slew means well over 50—authors who should have been included on the War List but weren't. As before, a few of these were easy enough to overlook, but a humiliating number were quite obvious, and still include many that I've actually read and enjoyed and should have remembered from the beginning. My face is red.

A good many of these were harvested from notes I had made on three very valuable critical works about women's writing on World War II. Jenny Hartley's Millions Like Us: British Women's Fiction of the Second World War (1997) is an absolutely invaluable resource if you're interested in this subject. I disagreed completely with her take on Rachel Ferguson's A Footman for the Peacock when I reviewed that novel, but considering that I might never have known about the novel at all if not for Hartley's book—nor, for that matter, about dozens of other titles she mentions—I owe her a big thanks.

Much additional information and many more titles came from Elizabeth Maslen's wonderful 2006 article "Women Writers in World War II," first published in Literature Compass, which manages to pack more useful information into a mere 11 pages than virtually any critical work I've ever encountered.

And finally, I confess I haven't even read all of Phyllis Lassner's British Women Writers of World War II: Battlegrounds of Their Own (1998), but already I'm harvesting titles and information from it.

How wonderful that there's such superb scholarship in an area that was neglected for many years. Now if the publishers would just get to work on reprinting more of these titles!

At any rate, all of the newly-added authors (and only the new-added authors) are listed below, to make it easy for those of you who have already looked at the whole list. If you happen to be new to the blog or haven't ever looked at the War List, you may want to go directly to the list itself for the full view. I confused a few people with the last update because I didn't make that clear enough. (I seem to think everyone else is as obsessed with my lists as I am and is therefore following each development of them with bated breath!)

Compiling the WWII text list has had the foreseeable effect of getting me thoroughly obsessed with these books and their themes again, so I may be reviewing a few of them here soon. I happened, just a few days ago, to have picked up a memoir by an author already on the War List, and I've been more or less lost to the world ever since, so engrossed have I been. Plus, I still have three more WWII-related "Hopeless No More" novels to get round to…

Hopefully, the list is now at least close to having all the most widely-known authors who fit the criteria, but of course, I could be wrong about that, and there might still be some incredibly obvious choices that I've left off. As always, if you notice any oversights, please do let me know.

JOSEPHINE BELL (1897-1987) (pseudonym of Doris Bell Ball, née Collier) Author of mysteries, often set in hospitals, which reflect her extensive experience as a doctor, including Murder in Hospital (1937) and Death in Retirement (1956), as well as mainstream novels such as The Bottom of the Well (1940) and Wonderful Mrs. Marriott (1948). War-themed works included the novel Martin Croft (1941), about a man wounded in World War I for whom Dunkirk is a healing experience, Death at the Medical Board (1944), and, presumably, Total War at Haverington (1947). Of Trouble at Wrekin Farm (1942) a contemporary review noted: "The appearance of the Home Guard in a detective story is a warning more deadly than any red sky at morning: like the line 'Won't you sit down' in a play, it is the sign manual of the mechanical, the obvious and the uninspired. Trouble at Wrekin Farm not only trots out the Home Guard, but also has a German 'plane land to take off a member of the Fifth Column who has obtained possession of a secret instrument. Luckily for us all, there are exceptions to every rule, and Miss Josephine Bell triumphantly retrieves this hopeless situation. Wrekin Farm is a quite credible place with a T.T. licence, a grass-drying plant, and land-girls, and it is run by a harassed producer-retailer whose troubles will win him the sympathy of all farmers (although his handling of his bull is open to a good deal of criticism)." Whether the critic intended me to be or not, I'm sold.

MARY HAYLEY BELL (1911-2005) (married name Mills) Playwright and novelist (and mother of Hayley Mills) known for stage hits Men in Shadow (1942) and Duet for Two Hands (1945); also author of at least two novels, including Whistle Down the Wind (1958), which was adapted for film and stage. Men in Shadow was a thriller about the French resistance.

THEODORA BENSON (1906-1968) Humorist and novelist who published popular satirical works with Betty Askwith in the 1930s, as well as cynically funny novels such as Salad Days (1928), Which Way? (1931), Façade (1933), and Concert Pitch (1934). Sweethearts and Wives: Their Part in War (1942) was a short book illustrated with home front photographs, encouraging women to take up war work in support of the men who were fighting.

URSULA BLOOM (1892-1984) (married names Denham-Cookes and Robinson, aka Sheila Burns, aka Mary Essex, aka Rachel Harvey, aka Lozania Prole, aka Deborah Mann, aka Sara Sloane) Author of hundreds of popular, gently humorous novels of social life. Some of her wartime works, such as Spring in September (1941), Time, Tide and I (1942), Robin in a Cage (1943), or The Amorous Bicycle (1944) may deal with the war. Undoubtedly, however, her later memoir War Isn't Wonderful (1961) covers the war years. She also wrote a biography of Eva Braun called Hitler's Eva (1954).

CHRISTIANNA BRAND (1907-1988) (pseudonym of Mary Christianna Milne, married name Lewis, aka Mary Ann Ashe, aka Annabel Jones, aka Mary Roland, aka China Thomson) Author of a series of mysteries featuring Inspector Cockrill. The most famous, Green for Danger (1944), is set in a hospital during World War II and is thick with the atmosphere of bombings and blackout. Heads You Lose (1942) is set in a snowed-in country house during the war, but apparently makes relatively little use of its wartime setting. After the war, Brand apparently returned to the thick of the war with Suddenly at His Residence (1946, aka The Crooked Wreath). The postwar feel of London also figures prominently in Death of Jezebel (1948)

ANGELA BRAZIL (1868-1947) Writer of enormously popular girls' school stories, beginning with The Fortunes of Philippa (1906), often dealing with schoolgirls solving mild mysteries; others include The Girls of St. Cyprian's (1914), The Madcap of the School (1922), and An Exciting Term (1936). Her wartime works generally present war in the most idealized way, such as in The Luckiest Girl in the School (1916), A Patriotic Schoolgirl (1918), and For the School Colours (1918). During World War II, Brazil published The Secret of Border Castle (1943), in which a school is evacuated to a safer location.

MARY BURCHELL (1904–1986) (pseudonym of Ida Cook) Mills & Boon romance novelist also known for working to rescue Jews from Germany in the 1930s; her novels often center around opera, and include Wife to Christopher (1936), Dare I Be Happy? (1943), and Choose the One You'll Marry (1960). The amazing story of Ida and her sister Louise and their wartime exploits (posing as shy, frumpy, but obsessed opera fans, they made multiple trips to Germany in the years before war broke out, smuggling valuables which enabled Jewish refugees to prove their financial resources to British authorities and thus be allowed to enter the country) are described in fascinating detail in her memoir, We Followed Our Stars (1950), which was reprinted in 2008 as Safe Passage. How it can not have been made into a movie thus far is a mystery.

ELIZABETH CARFRAE (?c1887-?1961) (pseudonym of Margaret Wilson, later married name Cradock, née ?????, dates elsewhere incorrectly given as 1879-1968) One of the first major Mills and Boon authors of romantic fiction, active from the 1920s to the 1960s; titles include Barbed Wire (1925), The Trivial Round (1930), Sunlight on the Hills (1934), Happy Families (1944), Sunshine in September (1955), and Brief Enchantment (1962). Information about most of Carfrae's books is sparse, so it's difficult to know which of her works might make use of the war, but Elizabeth Maslen does mention that in The Lonely Road (1942), "the debate between pacifism and commitment to war are at the core of the romance."

BARBARA CARTLAND (1901-2000) (married name McCorquodale) Author of 700+ romance novels (!!) over 75+ years; her memoirs We Danced All Night (1970), about World War I, and The Years of Opportunity (1948), about World War II, are of interest; her heroines tended to be moral, but Cartland herself was famed for her bawdiness in interviews.

HESTER W[OLFERSTAN]. CHAPMAN (1899-1976) (née Pellatt, other married name Griffin) Biographer and historical novelist whose titles include She Saw Them Go By (1933), Worlds Apart (1947), Ever Thine (1951), and Falling Stream (1954). During the war, she published Long Division (1943), a wartime tale in which, according to Jenny Hartley, the narrator "establishes and runs a preparatory school; teaching and caring for children prove absorbing and worthwhile. Married to a compulsive adulterer who eventually abandons her (his average proposal rate is one a month), the narrator learns to manage on her own, and sturdily refuses a marriage proposal from a rich and handsome widower because she suspects he will be dull." It doesn't sound completely promising, but bear in mind that the novel is also mentioned positively by Barbara Pym in her WWII diaries

EILEEN HELEN CLEMENTS (1905-1993) (married name Hunter) Author of nearly two dozen mystery thrillers from just before WWII until the 1960s; her titles include Let Him Die (1939), Perhaps a Little Danger (1942), Weathercock (1949), Over and Done With (1952), Discord in the Air (1955), Uncommon Cold (1958), and Honey for the Marshall (1960). Clements wrote at least three novels with wartime themes: Cherry Harvest (1943) is a mystery set at an evacuated girls' school during a half-term break; according to a contemporary review, in Berry Green (1945) "[t]he pastoral village of Berry Green is abuzz with excitement over the visit by a famour actor who says he is doing research but might actually be a German spy looking for a lost bomb"; and in Weathercock (1949), 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."

MARGARET COLE (1893-1980) (née Allen, aka M. I. Cole) Politician, education advocate, and author of numerous mystery novels with her husband G. D. H. Cole, including Poison in the Garden Suburb (1929), Mrs Warrender's Profession (1938), Counterpoint Murder (1940), and Toper's End (1942). The last of these, at least, is set during World War II, and presumably so is Murder at the Munition Works (1940).

BARBARA COMYNS (1907-1992) (pseudonym of Barbara Comyns Carr, née Bayley, first married name Pemberton) Novelist known for her brilliant black comedies of childhood and youth, including Who Was Changed and Who Was Dead (1955), a hilariously morbid story of childhood in an unhinged English village, Our Spoons Came from Woolworth's (1950), and The Vet's Daughter (1959). Her late novel Mr. Fox (1987) is set during World War II and is based on her time, following the breakup of her first marriage, sharing a home with a disreputable man who inspired the title character. Several of her earlier postwar novels, in which she might have applied her wonderfully peculiar viewpoint to postwar conditions, are unfortunately set before the war.

MARCH COST (1897–1973) (pseudonym of Margaret Mackie Morrison, aka Peggy Morrison) Novelist known for A Man Called Luke (1933), about a physician who may be reincarnated; others include The Dark Star (1939) and The Hour Awaits (1952); under her real name, Morrison wrote lighter fare like Flying High (1943) and Wider Horizons (1952), about an air hostess who finds love. It's unclear whether Flying High is set during wartime or prewar, but Paid to Be Safe (1948), which she published under her real name in collaboration with Pamela Tulk-Hart, "follows the women of the Air Transport Auxiliary, where the glamour of flying is undeniable. But, as the book's epigraph quotes from the ATA Pilot's Reminder Book, 'Remember, you are paid to be safe, not brave.' Safety can be rather a dull virtue, and the women's lives turn out to be an odd blend of strenuous activity, flying jargon, bridge hands and romance" (Hartley).

RICHMAL CROMPTON (1890-1969) (pseudonym of Richmal Crompton Lamburn) Best known for Just William (1922) and dozens of subsequent books about a schoolboy's adventures, Crompton also wrote novels for adults, including Family Roundabout (1948), reprinted by Persephone, and Leadon Hill (1927) and Matty and the Dearingroydes (1956), reprinted by Greyladies. Mrs. Frensham Describes a Circle (1942)—also reprinted by Greyladies—is a very enjoyable tale of an older woman rediscovering her interest in life following her husband's death in a bombing raid. A series of William's war-related adventures was collected as William at War.

CLEMENCE DANE (1888-1965) Playwright, mystery writer and novelist known for A Bill of Divorcement (1921), a successful play about changing divorce laws, Regiment of Woman (1917), a controversial novel about lesbianism in a girls' school, and Broome Stages (1931), about several generations of a theatre family. The Arrogant History of White Ben (1939) is an allegorical novel about the rise of Hitler and the Nazis.

JOSEPHINE ELDER (1895-1988) (pseudonym of Olive Gwendoline Potter, aka Margaret Potter) Author of numerous girls’ school novels, including Evelyn Finds Herself (1929), Elder also wrote six adult novels, often centered around medicine and some reprinted by Greyladies, including Sister Anne Resigns (1931), The Mystery of the Purple Bentley (1932), Lady of Letters (1949) and The Encircled Heart (1951), Doctor's Children (1954), and Fantastic Honeymoon (1961). Two of the Strangers at the Farm School (1940) are Jewish refugee children, discussed here. Doctor's Children is very much a novel of the postwar, dealing with a woman doctor at the time that the National Health Service was being implemented.

LEONORA EYLES (1889-1960) (née Pitcairn, married name Murray, aka Elizabeth Lomond? [see entry for Lomond below]) Journalist and novelist who focused on working class women in her non-fiction The Woman in the Little House (1922) and novels like Margaret Protests (1919) and Hidden Lives (1922); published successful mysteries in the 1930s, including Death of a Dog (1936) and No Second Best (1939). During World War II Eyles wrote For My Enemy Daughter (1941), a series of letters to her daughter, who had married an Italian and was living in Italy. Perhaps also of interest are Eyles' cookbook, Eating Well in War-time (1940), and her wartime advice book Cutting the Coat: A Book for Every Housewife in War-time (1941).

RACHEL [ETHELREDA] FERGUSON (1892-1957) Quirky novelist best known for The Brontës Went to Woolworth's (1931, now available from Bloomsbury); other novels include The Stag at Bay (1932), Alas, Poor Lady (1937, reprinted by Persephone), and A Stroll Before Sunset (1946). A Footman for the Peacock (1940) is one of my favorites of World War II, a hilarious, edgy, biting satire about a family of snobs dodging any and all wartime responsibility while coping with a Nazi-sympathizing peacock who may be the reincarnation of an ill-fated footman from the family's distant, cruel past. Passionate Kensington (1939) and Royal Borough (1950) are her acclaimed memoirs of life in Kensington, the latter of which includes the war years. Among Ferguson's other wartime works, Evenfield (1942) and A Stroll Before Sunset are both historical, and Spectator's tongue-in-cheek review of The Late Widow Twankey (1943) makes it impossible to tell what it might be about.

PAMELA FRANKAU (1908-1967) Prolific and popular novelist whose novels elegantly explore social issues; A Wreath for the Enemy (1954) is a spellbinding story of a young girl's life-altering summer; others include The Willow Cabin (1949), The Winged Horse (1953), and Frankau's personal favorite, The Bridge (1957). A portion of The Willow Cabin takes place during World War II, and the main character leads a rather drab life in the Auxiliary Territorial Service, billeted in a former girls' school.

ELIZABETH GOUDGE (1900-1984) Novelist and children's author, known for The Little White Horse (1946), J. K. Rowling's favorite children's book; novels include the bestseller Green Dolphin Country (1944), a trilogy, The Eliots of Damerosehay (1940-1953), and the powerful wartime novel The Castle on the Hill (1943). Of Castle, my notes at the time mention that it occasionally veers into sentimentality and the romantic scenes are awkward, but also that Goudge had something in common with Iris Murdoch, with her "serious concerns for good and evil, for the ways people reason through their own behaviors and religious and cultural dogmas, and for a sort of mysticism that, though perhaps more postmodernly questioned in Murdoch than in Goudge, certainly permeates the works of both." Hmmm, perhaps a re-read is called for. Pilgrims' Inn (1948, aka The Herb of Grace), the second volume of the Eliots trilogy, is set immediately after the war.

LORNA HILL (1902-1991) (née Leatham) Prolific author of girls' ballet stories, pony books, and other children's fiction; A Dream of Sadler's Wells (1950) and its sequels present an ideal view of ballet training, while The Vicarage Children (1961) and its sequels offer more realistic portrayals of middle class family life. Hill's early books were written only to entertain her daughter, and she had completed eight by the time she began to publish her Marjorie series in the late 1940s. The fourth title in that series, Northern Lights, was written as a Christmas present for her daughter in 1941, but by the time the stories were being published, its wartime setting was deemed not of interest to readers. It was finally privately published in 1999 and then reprinted by Girls Gone By.

MARGARET ILES (?1903-?1998) More research needed; published five novels in the 1930s and 1940s—Season Ticket (1934), Elder Daughter (1936), Perry’s Cows (1937), Burden of Tyre (1939), and Nobody’s Darlings (1942). The last is mentioned by Hartley and seems to deal with evacuees in a rural village—intriguing enough, but apparently it's impossible to locate a copy.

F[RYNIWYD]. TENNYSON JESSE (1888-1958) (married name Harwood) Novelist, historian, and criminologist known for The Lacquer Lady (1929), about life at the Burmese Royal Palace, and A Pin to See the Peepshow (1934), a novel about a famous murder case, both reprinted by Virago in the 1980s. Early in World War II, Jesse and husband Harold Harwood collected their letters to friends in the U.S. and published them in two volumes, London Front (1940) and While London Burns (1942). Also in 1942, Jesse wrote an account of the courageous salvage of a tanker set on fire by Germans, called The Saga of the San Demetrio (1942). This was later made into a movie.

PAMELA HANSFORD JOHNSON (1912-1981) (married name Snow) Popular author of satirical novels, of which The Unspeakable Skipton (1959), based on the life of the infamous Baron Corvo, is regarded as her best. Johnson published several war-related novels. The Family Pattern (1942) is a family saga beginning in the 1890s and ending during World War II. Winter Quarters (1943) focuses on an army battery stationed in a small English village. The Trojan Brothers (1944) also makes use of the war.

MARGARET KENNEDY (1896-1967) (married name Davies) Novelist best known for the massively successful The Constant Nymph (1924), about an eccentric family, which was also dramatized and filmed; others include a sequel, The Fool of the Family (1930), A Long Time Ago (1932), Return I Dare Not (1934), and Troy Chimneys (1953). Early in the war, Kennedy published Where Stands a Winged Sentry (1941), which Phyllis Lassner rather irresistibly describes as "her memoir of wartime domestic life." The Feast (1950), sometimes considered Kennedy's best work, makes vivid use of postwar conditions, including concerns about rationing and the fact that the central catastrophe of the novel is brought about by a stray mine which has exploded a few months earlier.

MARGARET LANE (1906-1994) (married names Wallace and Hastings) Biographer, children’s author, and novelist, known for biographies of Beatrix Potter and the Brontës, and for novels including Faith, Hope, No Charity (1935, winner of the Prix Femina-Vie Heureuse), At Last the Island (1937), A Crown of Convolvulus (1954). and A Calabash of Diamonds (1961). Where Helen Lies (1944) provides polished romantic melodrama (from the sound of a contemporary review) set against the backdrop of the war, and Walk into My Parlor (1941), about a bogus spiritualist, was published during the war and is set in London, but could be set in earlier years.

ROSAMOND LEHMANN (1901-1990) (married names Runciman and Philipps) Now sometimes compared to Woolf or Bowen, Lehmann was seen in her lifetime as a quintessentially middlebrow writer; her novels include Dusty Answer (1927), The Weather in the Streets (1936), The Ballad and the Source (1944), and The Echoing Grove (1953). According to the Guardian, "[w]ar looms large" in her story collection, The Gypsy's Baby and Other Stories (1946). Her one wartime novel, The Ballad and the Source, was set in the years before World War I, but The Echoing Grove (1953) is very much a novel of the postwar, and includes flashbacks to the Blitz & wartime conditions.

DORIS LESLIE (1891-1982) (née Oppenheim, second married name Hannay) Author of numerous romantic and historical novels from the 1920s-1970s, including Puppets Parade (1932), Concord in Jeopardy (1938), and That Enchantress (1950). Polonaise (1943) was a success during the war, but was historical in themes. Only House in the Dust (1942) seems to qualify her for this list, and just barely at that. It too is primarily historical—my notes about it say that only about 8 pages, in which the "spunky female lead, now elderly, comes to view the ruins of her old house," are set during wartime.

JEAN MACGIBBON (1913-2002) (née Howard, aka Jean Howard) Intriguing author of one highly-acclaimed novel for adults, When the Weather's Changing (1945), about the events of a farmer's wife's summer. Although this takes place as the war is drawing to a close, it seems that the war remains more or less in the background. MacGibbon then suffered a nervous breakdown and thereafter turned mainly to children's fiction, including the school story Pam Plays Doubles (1962).

HELEN MACINNES (1907-1985) (married name Highet) Bestselling author of spy novels. Several of her earliest novels deal with World War II, while later works focus more on Cold War themes. The acclaimed Assignment in Brittany (1942) and While Still We Live (1944) deal with the French and Polish resistance respectively. Above Suspicion (1941) and Horizon (1945) are also set during the war. Some later works, such as Pray for a Brave Heart (1955) and The Salzburg Connection (1968), deal with wartime secrets that still provoke adventures. MacInnes also wrote two lighter, humorous works—Rest and Be Thankful (1949) and Home Is the Hunter (1964).

Olivia Manning OLIVIA [MARY] MANNING (1908-1980) (married name Smith, aka O. M. Manning, aka Jacob Morrow) Novelist best known for two semi-autobiographical trilogies about a young couple in World War II, The Balkan Trilogy—comprised of The Great Fortune (1960), The Spoilt City (1962), and Friends and Heroes (1965)—and The Levant Trilogy (comprised of The Danger Tree (1977), The Battle Lost and Won (1978), and The Sum of Things (1980), collectively known as "Fortunes of War" after the title of a BBC dramatization. Her earlier novels included Artist Among the Missing (1949), about a painter scarred by his war experiences. Her story collection, Growing Up (1948), includes several stories written during and immediately after the war—in particular, "Twilight of the Gods," set in 1946, evokes the exhaustion of the immediate postwar.

ANNE MAYBURY (c1901-1993) (pseudonym of Anne Arundel, married name Buxton, aka Katherine Troy) Author of romance and romantic suspense novels; early works include Love Triumphant (1932), Catch at a Rainbow (1935), Arise, Oh Sun (1940), and A Lady Fell in Love (1943), though she is best known for late novels like The Minerva Stone (1968) and Ride a White Dolphin (1971). Arise, Oh Sun, at least, seems to have some wartime themes. Other wartime titles include All Enchantments Die (1941), To-Day We Live (1942), A Lady Fell in Love (1943), Journey Into Morning (1944), and The Valley of Roses (1945).

NANCY MITFORD (1904-1973) (married name Rodd) Novelist and biographer, known for the popular social comedies The Pursuit of Love (1945) and Love in a Cold Climate (1949), and for successful biographies such as Madame de Pompadour (1953), Voltaire in Love (1957), and The Sun King (1966). Pigeon Pie (1940) is a rather zany spy story set in the earliest days of World War II.

MARY NORTON (1903-1992) (née Pearson) Best known for the Borrowers series of children’s books (1952-1982), Norton’s early novels The Magic Bed-knob (1943) and Bonfires and Broomsticks (1947), are of interest to me first because they focus on a spinster who is learning to be a witch, but also because they are set during wartime. The former includes a scene in London, where the main character and her young charges get into trouble in the blackout. These novels were (more or less) the source of Disney's Bedknobs and Broomsticks. Virago issued some of her other work as Bread and Butter Stories.

KATE O'BRIEN (1897-1974) Playwright and novelist who often focused on Irish family life; novels (most available from Virago) include Without My Cloak (1931), The Anteroom (1934), Mary Lavelle (1936), The Land of Spices (1941), The Last of Summer (1943), That Lady (1946), and The Flower of May (1953). Of O'Brien's wartime titles, The Land of Spices is set in the early years of the 20th century and That Lady is set even further back in history. Only The Last of Summer seems to make use of the war at all—set during a two week period in late summer of 1939, just as the war is beginning and causing dilemmas for the characters of its social drama.

JANE OLIVER (1903-1970) (pseudonym of Helen Christine Rees, née Easson Evans, aka Joan Blair [with Ann Stafford]) Author of more than two dozen novels, most historical, from the 1930s-1970s, including Tomorrow's Woods (1932), Mine is the Kingdom (1937), The Hour of the Angel (1942), In No Strange Land (1944), Crown for a Prisoner (1953), and Queen Most Fair (1959). The Hour of the Angel is a Blitz novel, whose main character's husband is in the RAF. In No Strange Land appears to be primarily historical but perhaps end with the war? Hartley says of it: "Sometimes it seems as though all roads must lead to war and even a novel starting in Biblical times finishes in the RAF." Oliver's concern for the RAF was personal—her husband, John Llewellyn Rhys, had been in the RAF and had been killed in 1940. She later initiated the literary prize bearing his name.

CAROLA OMAN (1897-1978) (née Lenanton, aka C. Lenanton) Biographer and historical novelist, known for bios of Elizabeth of Bohemia, Walter Scott, and others, Oman also wrote several historical novels including The Road Royal (1924), Miss Barrett's Elopement (1929), Major Grant (1931), Over the Water (1935), and Nothing to Report (1940). The last seems to be a domestic novel set in the early days of World War II.

SHEILA PIM (1909-1995) Also a popular writer on gardening, Pim is best known for her four mystery novels, in particular Common or Garden Crime (1945), which vividly portrays wartime life in an Irish village; the others are A Brush With Death (1950), Creeping Venom (1950), and A Hive of Suspects (1952).

DORIS POCOCK (1890-1974) Poet and children's author whose work includes girls' school stories such as The Head Girl's Secret (1927), mystery stories like The Riddle of the Rectory (1931), and World War II stories like Catriona Carries On (1940) and Lorna on the Land (1946), the latter about Land Girls.

E[ILEEN]. ARNOT ROBERTSON (1903-1961) (pseudonym of Eileen Arbuthnot Robertson, married name Turner) Novelist known for three early novels reprinted by Virago in the 1980s—Cullum (1928), Four Frightened People (1931), set in the Malayan jungle, and Ordinary Families (1933), a family comedy set in Suffolk. The Signpost (1943) is about a wounded RAF pilot and his relationship with a French woman in a remote Irish fishing village.

JEAN ROSS (1907-1985) (pseudonym of Irene Dale Hewson) Children's author and novelist; titles include Flowers Without Sun (1938), Aunt Ailsa (1944), Jania (1948), A Picnic by Wagonette (1953), The Great-Aunts (1964), and the intriguing A View of the Island: A Post-Atomic Age Fairy Tale (1965). Kate O'Brien, writing in the Spectator in 1945, said of Aunt Ailsa that it "is a book about English family life between the last war and the present time. It is like a great many such books, in being truthful, matter-of-fact, humorous and likeable. Miss Ross has a steady eye for character and an easy naturalistic way in dialogue, and a great many people will derive entertainment from her unaffected exploitation of these talents." Strangers Under Our Roof (1943) certainly sounds as though it might deal with evacuees or refugees, two popular themes during the war, but I can find little information about it.

MAUREEN SARSFIELD (dates unknown) (aka Maureen Pretyman) Author of two humorous mysteries now reprinted by Rue Morgue Press—Green December Fills the Graveyard (1945), set in a partially-bombed out manor house in the late years of the war, and A Dinner for None (1948). Sadly, Rue Morgue felt the need to give both books extraordinarily dull new titles for their reprints—Murder at Shots Hall and Murder at Beechlands respectively. Sarsfield also published one long-forgotten non-mystery, Gloriana (1946), and several children's books including Queen Victoria Lost Her Crown (1946).

CONSTANCE [WINIFRED] SAVERY (1897-1999) Author of numerous children's books and adult novels including two with a school component—Redhead at School (1951) and The Golden Cap (1966); others are Pippin's House (1931), Moonshine in Candle Street (1937), Blue Fields (1947), Scarlet Plume (1953), and Breton Holiday (1963). Other of her works could deal with the war, but certainly Enemy Brothers (1943) belongs on this list—it's about a British airman who believes that a young German prisoner is actually his brother, who had been kidnapped many years before. Enemy Brothers was reprinted by American religious publisher Bethlehem Books in 2001. The physical version seems to be out of print, but the ebook is still available.

DOROTHY L[EIGH]. SAYERS (1893-1957) (married name Fleming) Scholar and mystery writer known for her Peter Wimsey/Harriet Vane novels, including Strong Poison (1930), Have His Carcase (1932), Murder Must Advertise (1934), and (the most acclaimed), The Nine Tailors (1934) and Gaudy Night (1935). After the 1930s, Sayers wrote no more novels, though she did write one short story featuring Lord Peter during the war. "Tallboys," written in 1942, did not appear until 1971, in the collection Striding Folly (1971).

MARGERY SHARP (1905-1991) (married name Castle) Novelist and children's author known for her children’s series starting with The Rescuers (1959) and for numerous light humorous novels including The Nutmeg Tree (1937), Harlequin House (1939), The Stone of Chastity (1940), Cluny Brown (1944), and The Foolish Gentlewoman (1948). Sharp's own experiences living through the bombing of London show up in Britannia Mews (1946), considered one of her best novels. Cluny Brown, though published in wartime, is set in 1938.

DOROTHY EVELYN SMITH (dates unknown) Novelist whose work ranged from romantic melodrama, as in Lost Hill (1952), to dark comedy, in Miss Plum and Miss Penny (1959), to the war-themed He Went for a Walk (1954), in which a boy made homeless by the Blitz finds his way across wartime England. The last has been recommended on the D. E. Stevenson discussion list. Other titles include My Lamp Is Bright (1948), The Lovely Day (1957), and Brief Flower (1966).

STEVIE SMITH (1902-1971) (full name Florence Margaret Smith) Well-regarded poet and critic who also published three eccentric novels, Novel on Yellow Paper (1936), in which Smith’s alter-ego, a secretary named Pompey, is introduced, Over the Frontier (1938), and The Holiday (1949), all reprinted by Persephone. The last of these was actually written in the final years of the war, but when it was published a few years later the publisher felt that readers were no longer interested in the war. Smith revised the novel and removed or veiled many of the references to wartime conditions. It still retains an oddly claustrophobic feel, however, which surely comes from the pervasive fatigue and resignation to fate that seems to characterize the final years of the war. A few more short wartime writings appeared in Me Again, which collected numerous previously unpublished or uncollected pieces by Smith.

MURIEL SPARK (1918-2006) (née Camberg) Major novelist whose works combine dark humor with a Catholic sensibility; her most acclaimed works include Memento Mori (1959), The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1961), The Girls of Slender Means (1963), Loitering With Intent (1981), and A Far Cry from Kensington (1988). The Girls of Slender Means takes place in a London boarding-house for girls during the final days of World War II.

FREYA STARK (1893?-1993) (married name Perowne) Best known for travel books like The Valleys of the Assassins (1932) and A Winter in Arabia (1940), Stark also wrote several significant memoirs, including Traveller's Prelude (1950) and Dust in the Lion’s Paw (1961), the latter of which covers her wartime years, which included frequent travel in the Middle East and beyond in her work for the Ministry of Information.

NOEL STREATFEILD (1895-1986) (aka Susan Scarlett) Known for children's fiction such as Ballet Shoes (1936) and Curtain Up (1944, aka Theatre Shoes), Streatfeild wrote serious novels as well as her romantic and family-themed novels under the pseudonym Susan Scarlett. Of the latter, Summer Pudding (1943) and Murder While You Work (1944) are certainly set during the war, and Poppies for England (1946) is evocative in its immediate postwar setting. Among her "serious" novels, I Ordered a Table for Six (1942) is bleak but intriguing, and Saplings (1945, reprinted by Persephone) Is a compelling family story about the lingering effects of the Blitz.

GERALDINE SYMONS (1909-1997) (aka Georgina Groves) Known for a children's series featuring Pansy and Atalanta, two children who find themselves in major historical events, including the suffrage movement in Miss Rivers and Miss Bridges (1971); her three adult novels are All Souls (1950), French Windows (1952), and The Suckling (1969). Her novel Now and Then (1977, published in the U.S. as Crocuses Were Over, Hitler Was Dead) is 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 meets a gardener and his dog from those earlier years.

P[AMELA]. L[YNDON]. TRAVERS (1899-1996) [pseudonym of Helen Lyndon Goff) Known for Mary Poppins (1934) and its sequels, including Mary Poppins Comes Back (1935), Mary Poppins Opens the Door (1944), and Mary Poppins in the Park (1952), Travers also wrote I Go by Land, I Go by Sea (1941), about evacuees in World War II, and the memoir Moscow Excursion (1934).

FRANCES [MARY] TURK (1915-2004) Prolific popular author of light romantic novels. At least two of her works feature wartime themes: Candle Corner (1943) is about an RAF pilot recovering from injuries on a farm—naturally, romance follows; and The Five Grey Geese (1944) is a lively, gung-ho tale about a group of young Land Girls (who also, naturally, find romance)—I had fun with it, but don't expect too much… Other Turk titles include Ancestors (1947), Salutation (1949), and Dinny Lightfoot (1956).

PATRICIA WENTWORTH (1878-1961) (pseudonym of Dora Amy Elles, married names Dillon and Turnbull) Novelist who published several historical romances before turning to her successful Miss Silver mystery series. She published regularly from 1910 until just before her death in 1961. Several of her wartime mysteries use the war as a backdrop, including The Chinese Shawl (1943), The Clock Strikes Twelve (1944), Miss Silver Deals With Death (1944, aka Miss Silver Intervenes), The Key (1944), and The Traveller Returns (1945, aka She Came Back). Several postwar titles make retrospective reference to the war, but The Case of William Smith (1948) is probably most prominent, featuring a returning soldier with amnesia. The deaf main character of The Listening Eye (1955) is described as having lost her hearing in a bombing raid during the Blitz.

REBECCA WEST (1892-1983) (pseudonym of Cicily Isabel Andrews, née Fairfield) Novelist, journalist, and travel writer, best known for the semi-autobiographical family saga The Fountain Overflows (1957); her debut, The Return of the Soldier (1918), in which a soldier with shellshock struggles to remember two very different women who love him, is considered an important novel of World War I. West does not seem to have written any major fiction about World War II, but The Phoenix: The Meaning of Treason (1949) focuses on Brits, including William Joyce (aka Lord Haw-Haw), who worked for Germany during the war, and A Train of Powder (1955) features her accounts of the Nuremberg trials. Other works include The Judge (1922), Harriet Hume (1929), The Thinking Reed (1936), and The Birds Fall Down (1966), as well as Black Lamb and Grey Falcon (1941), a massive exploration of the culture of the Balkans.

DOROTHY WHIPPLE (1893-1966) (née Stirrup) Popular novelist whose works have been revived by Persephone in recent years, including High Wages (1930), Greenbanks (1932), The Priory (1939), They Were Sisters (1943), and her powerful final work, Someone at a Distance (1953), about the destruction of a happy marriage. The Priory is set during the leadup to the war, and features a poignant scene in which a pregnant woman imagines her chances of surviving a bombing raid. (As a side note, E. M. Delafield's Provincial Lady in Wartime, published the following year, recommends The Priory to a friend as the perfect wartime reading.) They Were Sisters (1943), though written during war, is actually set in the 1930s. The story collection Persephone put together a few years ago, The Closed Door and Other Stories includes some stories set during the war. And Whipple's final novel, Someone at a Distance (1953), is highly evocative of the postwar years, as well as recalling the characters' wartime experiences. I am also intrigued by a title published after Whipple's death. Random Commentary (1966) is subtitled Books and Journals Kept from 1925 Onwards and is compiled from her working notebooks. It reportedly "relates the details of daily life," which, includes observations on rationing and making do during the war years, as well as some glimpses of her life as a writer, including a party at which the room was "filled, at first sight, with Dorothy Sayers in a furred red velvet robe with gold chains, like a mediaeval Alderman of the City of London."

VIRGINIA WOOLF (1882-1941) (née Stephen) A central figure in British literature, known for novels such as Mrs. Dalloway (1925), To the Lighthouse (1927), Orlando (1928), and The Waves (1931), and for her voluminous diaries and letters. Many of her early works deal prominently with World War I, including Jacob's Room (1922) and Mrs. Dalloway (1925), which includes a traumatized ex-soldier among its cast. She wrote two very famous long essays, A Room of One’s Own (1929), about the difficulties for women of being creative artists, and Three Guineas (1938), a passionate condemnation of war and fascism. Woolf's final letters and diary entries are revealing about the war and its traumatic effect on her, which probably played a role in her suicide, and her musings about the war in "Thoughts on Peace in an Air Raid" (1940) are also fascinating. Woolf's final novel, Between the Acts (1941), published posthumously, is set at a village pageant just before the outbreak of war. The approach of war remains muted on the surface of the novel, but is symbolically present throughout.