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Barbara Comyns
A Savage Innocence
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Brief Description
The extraordinary twentieth-century writer Barbara Comyns led a life as captivating as the narratives she spun. This pioneering biography reveals the journey of a woman who experienced hardship and single-motherhood before the age of thirty but went on to publish a sequence of novels that are...
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See moreThis biography of Barbara Comyns presents a twentieth-century author whose life was as extraordinary as her novels. Hundreds of unpublished letters reveal an occasionally desperate but resourceful and witty woman whose complicated life ranged from enduring poverty when young to mixing with spivs, spies and high society.
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Description
The extraordinary twentieth-century writer Barbara Comyns led a life as captivating as the narratives she spun. This pioneering biography reveals the journey of a woman who experienced hardship and single-motherhood before the age of thirty but went on to publish a sequence of novels that are unique in the English language.
Comyns turned her hand to many jobs in order to survive, from artist's model to restoring pianos. Hundreds of unpublished letters reveal an occasionally desperate but resourceful and witty woman whose complicated life ranged from enduring poverty when young to mixing with spivs, spies, and high society. While working as a housekeeper in her mid-thirties, Comyns began transforming the bleak episodes of her life into compelling fictions streaked with surrealism and deadpan humour. The Vet's Daughter (1959), championed by Graham Greene, brought her fame, although her use of the gothic and macabre divided readers and reviewers.
This biography not only excavates Comyns's life but also reclaims her fiction, providing a timely reassessment of her literary contribution. It sheds new light on a remarkable author who deftly captured the complexities of human life.
Book Details
INFORMATION
ISBN: 9781526173744
Publisher: Manchester University Press
Format: Hardback
Date Published: 19 March 2024
Country: United Kingdom
Imprint: Manchester University Press
Illustration: 41 black & white illustrations
Audience: General / adult
DIMENSIONS
Width: 156.0mm
Height: 234.0mm
Weight: 250g
Pages: 372
About the Author
Avril Horner is an Emeritus Professor of English at Kingston University. She is the author or editor of numerous books, most recently Women and the Gothic with Sue Zlosnik (2016) and Living on Paper: Letters from Iris Murdoch 193495 with Anne Rowe (2015).
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