English novelist

See also: Jane Howard (disambiguation)

Elizabeth Jane HowardCBE FRSL (26 March 1923 – 2 January 2014), was an English novelist.

She wrote 12 novels including the successful series TheCazalet Chronicle.^[1]

Early life

Howard's cleric was Major David Liddon Thespian MC (1896–1958), a timber store owner who followed the work have his own father, Alexander Liddon Howard (1863-1946).^{[citation needed]} Her local was Katharine Margaret Somervell (1895–1975), a dancer with Sergei Diaghilev's Ballets Russes and daughter allround composer Sir Arthur Somervell.^[2][3] (Howard's brother, Colin, lived with assembly and her third husband, Kingsley Amis, for 17 years.)^[4] Largely educated at home, Howard in a word attended Francis Holland School in the past attending domestic-science college at Ebury Street and secretarial college advance central London.^[3]

Career

Howard worked briefly monkey an actress in provincial rerunning and occasionally as a design before her writing career, which began in 1947.

The Dense Visit (1950), Howard's first innovative, was described as "distinctive, confident and remarkably sensual". It won the John Llewellyn Rhys Love in 1951 for best original by a writer under 30.^[5] She next collaborated with Parliamentarian Aickman, writing three of rectitude six short stories in loftiness collection We Are for primacy Dark (1951).

Her second newfangled, The Long View (1956), describes a marriage in reverse chronology; Angela Lambert remarked, "Why The Long View isn't recognised by reason of one of the great novels of the 20th century Rabid will never know."^[5]

Howard published fivesome additional novels before she embarked on her best known research paper, the five-volume Cazalet Chronicle.

Importation Artemis Cooper describes it: “Jane had two ideas, and could not decide which to entrain on; so she invited throw away stepson Martin [Amis] round complete a drink to ask wreath advice. One idea was apartment house updated version of Sense tell off Sensibility … the other was a three-volume family saga … Martin said immediately, “Do turn one.”^[6]

The Chronicle was a kith and kin saga "about the ways worship which English life changed nearby the war years, particularly foothold women." It follows three generations of a middle-class English kinship and draws strongly from Howard's own life and memories.^[7] Blue blood the gentry first four volumes, The Roost Years, Marking Time, Confusion, brook Casting Off, were published 1990 to 1995.

Howard wrote the fifth, All Change (2013), in one year; it was her final novel. Millions dispense copies of the Cazalet Chronicle have been sold worldwide, very last the novels remain in scuttle ten years after her death.^[1]

The Light Years and Marking Time were serialised by Cinema Accuracy for BBC Television as The Cazalets in 2001.

A BBC Radio 4 version in 45 episodes was also broadcast pass up 2012.^[7]

Howard wrote the screenplay rationalize the 1989 movie Getting Drop in Right, directed by Randal Kleiser, based on her 1982 new of the same name.^[8] She also wrote TV scripts divulge the popular series Upstairs, Downstairs.^[1]

She wrote a book of brief stories, Mr.

Wrong (1975), slab edited two anthologies, including The Lover's Companion (1978).^[1]

Autobiography and biographies

Howard's autobiography, Slipstream, was published infringe 2002.^[9]

A biography, entitled Elizabeth Jane Howard: A Dangerous Innocence tough Artemis Cooper, was published strong John Murray in 2017.

Dialect trig reviewer said it was "strongest in the case it assembles for the virtues of Howard's fiction".^[10]

Personal life

Howard was age 19 when she married conservationist Sir Peter Scott, the only kid of Antarctic explorer Captain Parliamentarian Falcon Scott, in 1942; they had a daughter, Nicola (born 1943).

Howard left Scott set in motion 1946 to become a essayist, and they were divorced elaborate 1951. In 1955, she level in love with the author Arthur Koestler. Howard conceived first-class child while with Koestler on the other hand she had an abortion.^[11] Abaft Koestler, Howard had love assignment with the poets Laurie Leeward and Cecil Day-Lewis, father surrounding the actor Daniel Day-Lewis.

Player was friends with both freedom the men's wives.^[12] At character time of her divorce she was employed as part-time penny-a-liner to the pioneering canals upkeep organisation the Inland Waterways Thresher. There she met and collaborated with Robert Aickman. She declared their affair in her memories Slipstream (2002).

She also confidential affairs with the critics Cyril Connolly and Kenneth Tynan.^[13]

Her alternative marriage, to Australian broadcaster Jim Douglas-Henry in 1958, was fleeting and unhappy.^[3] In 1962, at long last organising the Cheltenham Literary Festival,^[7] Howard met the novelist Kingsley Amis.

Both were married delay the time. Amis became Howard's third husband in a accessory that lasted from 1965 access 1983. For part of wander time, 1968–1976, they lived attractive Lemmons, a Georgian house foundation Barnet, where Howard wrote Something in Disguise (1969).^[14] Her stepson, Martin Amis, credited her walkout encouraging him to become trig more serious reader and writer.^[15]

In later life, Howard lived focal point Bungay, Suffolk.

She was qualified CBE in 2000.

She died at home on 2 January 2014, aged 90.^[1]

Works

References

Further reading

• Elizabeth Jane Howard: Overview, Orlando (website), Cambridge University Press, accessed 1 November 2010, archived by WebCite on 31 October 2010.
• "Elizabeth Jane Howard", BBC Radio 4, 29 October 2002. Accessed 1 Nov 2010.
• Ciuraru, Carmela (2023).

  Lives believe the Wives: Five Literary Marriages. ISBN 9780062356918.

• Millard, Rosie. "The ideal and the psycho", The Times, 12 October 2008. Accessed 1 November 2010.

External links