Angela Thirkell
Encyclopedia
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
and Australia
Australia
Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...
n novelist. She also published one novel, Trooper to Southern Cross, under the pseudonym Leslie Parker.
Early life
She was the elder daughter of John William MackailJohn William Mackail
John William Mackail O.M. was a Scottish man of letters and socialist, now best remembered as a Virgil scholar. He was also a poet, literary historian and biographer....
(1859–1945), a Scottish classical scholar and civil servant from the Isle of Bute
Isle of Bute
Bute is an island in the Firth of Clyde in Scotland. Formerly part of the county of Buteshire, it now constitutes part of the council area of Argyll and Bute. Its resident population was 7,228 in April 2001.-Geography:...
who was the Oxford
University of Oxford
The University of Oxford is a university located in Oxford, United Kingdom. It is the second-oldest surviving university in the world and the oldest in the English-speaking world. Although its exact date of foundation is unclear, there is evidence of teaching as far back as 1096...
professor of poetry from 1906 to 1911. Her mother was Margaret Burne-Jones, daughter of the Pre-Raphaelite painter Edward Burne-Jones
Edward Burne-Jones
Sir Edward Coley Burne-Jones, 1st Baronet was a British artist and designer closely associated with the later phase of the Pre-Raphaelite movement, who worked closely with William Morris on a wide range of decorative arts as a founding partner in Morris, Marshall, Faulkner, and Company...
, and through her Thirkell was the first cousin of Rudyard Kipling
Rudyard Kipling
Joseph Rudyard Kipling was an English poet, short-story writer, and novelist chiefly remembered for his celebration of British imperialism, tales and poems of British soldiers in India, and his tales for children. Kipling received the 1907 Nobel Prize for Literature...
and Stanley Baldwin
Stanley Baldwin
Stanley Baldwin, 1st Earl Baldwin of Bewdley, KG, PC was a British Conservative politician, who dominated the government in his country between the two world wars...
. Her brother, Denis Mackail
Denis Mackail
Denis George Mackail was an English novelist and short-story writer, publishing between the two world-wars.Although his work is now largely forgotten, 'Greenery Street', a novel of early married life in upper-middle class London, was republished by Persephone Books in 2002.-Biography:He was born...
(1892-1971), was also a novelist and they had a younger sister, Clare. The three Mackail children were, in their youth, treated first-hand to the fairytales of Mary de Morgan
Mary de Morgan
Mary de Morgan was an English writer and the author of three volumes of fairytales: On A Pincushion ; The Necklace of Princess Fiorimonde ; and The Windfairies...
Angela Mackail was educated in London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
at Claude Montefiore
Claude Montefiore
Claude Joseph Goldsmid Montefiore was son of Nathaniel Montefiore, and the great nephew of Sir Moses Montefiore. Some identify him as a significant figure in the contexts of modern Jewish religious thought, Jewish-Christian relations, and Anglo-Jewish socio-politics.-Education:He was educated at...
's Froebel Institute, then at St Paul's Girls' School
St Paul's Girls' School
St Paul's Girls' School is a senior independent school, located in Brook Green, Hammersmith, in West London, England.-History:In 1904 a new day school for girls was established by the trustees of the Dean Colet Foundation , which had run St Paul's School for boys since the sixteenth century...
, Hammersmith
Hammersmith
Hammersmith is an urban centre in the London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham in west London, England, in the United Kingdom, approximately five miles west of Charing Cross on the north bank of the River Thames...
, and in Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
at a finishing school for young ladies.
Marriages and children
Soon after her return from Paris, Angela Mackail met James Campbell McInnesJames Campbell McInnes
James Campbell McInnes was a well-known English baritone singer and teacher at the turn of the 20th century, ex-husband of author Angela Thirkell and father of writer Colin MacInnes.-Early life:...
(1874–1945), a professional singer, and married him in 1911. Their first son was born in January 1912 and named Graham after McInnes's former lover, Graham Peel. He became a diplomat and writer. Their second son was the novelist Colin MacInnes
Colin MacInnes
Colin MacInnes was an English novelist and journalist.-Early life:MacInnes was born in London, the son of singer James Campbell McInnes and novelist Angela Thirkell, who was also related to Rudyard Kipling and Stanley Baldwin. His family moved to Australia in 1920, MacInness returning in 1930...
. A third child, Mary, was born and died in 1917, and Angela then divorced her husband for adultery, in a blaze of publicity.
In December 1918, Angela married secondly George Lancelot Allnut Thirkell (1890-c. 1940), an engineer of her own age originally from Tasmania
Tasmania
Tasmania is an Australian island and state. It is south of the continent, separated by Bass Strait. The state includes the island of Tasmania—the 26th largest island in the world—and the surrounding islands. The state has a population of 507,626 , of whom almost half reside in the greater Hobart...
, and in 1920 they sailed for Australia together with her sons. However, the Thirkells led a lower-middle-class life in Melbourne
Melbourne
Melbourne is the capital and most populous city in the state of Victoria, and the second most populous city in Australia. The Melbourne City Centre is the hub of the greater metropolitan area and the Census statistical division—of which "Melbourne" is the common name. As of June 2009, the greater...
, in a house without indoor plumbing, and to Angela it was all deeply unfamiliar and repugnant. Their son Lancelot George Thirkell, later Comptroller of the BBC
BBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...
, was born there, but in November 1929 Angela left her husband without warning, returning to England on the pretext of a holiday, but in fact quitting Australia for good.(Strickland 153 and 168) Lacking money, she begged the fare to London from her godfather, J. M. Barrie
J. M. Barrie
Sir James Matthew Barrie, 1st Baronet, OM was a Scottish author and dramatist, best remembered today as the creator of Peter Pan. The child of a family of small-town weavers, he was educated in Scotland. He moved to London, where he developed a career as a novelist and playwright...
, and used the sum intended for her return ticket for two single passages, for herself and her youngest son. (Gould 43) She claimed that her parents were aging, and needed her, but she certainly also preferred the more comfortable life available with them in London. Her second son, Colin, followed her to England soon after, but Graham stayed in Melbourne.
Thereafter, her "attitude to any man to whom she attracted was summed up in the remark: 'It's very peaceful with no husbands,'" which "was quoted by the 'Observer' newspaper in its column 'Sayings of the Week'" (Strickland 164).
Writing career
Thirkell began writing early in her life in Australia, chiefly through the need for money. An article appeared in the Cornhill MagazineCornhill Magazine
The Cornhill Magazine was a Victorian magazine and literary journal named after Cornhill Street in London.Cornhill was founded by George Murray Smith in 1860 and was published until 1975. It was a literary journal with a selection of articles on diverse subjects and serialisations of new novels...
in November 1921 and was the first of many articles and short stories, including work for Australian radio. On her return to England in 1929, this career continued with journalism, stories for children, and then novels. Her success as a novelist began with her second novel, High Rising (1933). She set most of her novels in Anthony Trollope
Anthony Trollope
Anthony Trollope was one of the most successful, prolific and respected English novelists of the Victorian era. Some of his best-loved works, collectively known as the Chronicles of Barsetshire, revolve around the imaginary county of Barsetshire...
's Barsetshire
Barsetshire
Barsetshire is a fictional British county created by Anthony Trollope, which is featured in the series of novels known as the "Chronicles of Barsetshire". The county town and cathedral town is Barchester...
, his fictional English county developed in the six novels known as the Chronicles of Barsetshire
Chronicles of Barsetshire
The Chronicles of Barsetshire is a series of six novels by the English author Anthony Trollope, set in the fictitious cathedral town of Barchester...
. An alert reader of contemporary fiction, Thirkell also borrowed freely from such now-arcane titles as John Galsworthy
John Galsworthy
John Galsworthy OM was an English novelist and playwright. Notable works include The Forsyte Saga and its sequels, A Modern Comedy and End of the Chapter...
's The Country House, from which, for example, she lifted the name 'Worsted' which she used for the village setting of her novel August Folly (1936). She also quoted frequently, and without attribution, from novels by Charles Dickens
Charles Dickens
Charles John Huffam Dickens was an English novelist, generally considered the greatest of the Victorian period. Dickens enjoyed a wider popularity and fame than had any previous author during his lifetime, and he remains popular, having been responsible for some of English literature's most iconic...
, William Thackeray, and Elizabeth Gaskell
Elizabeth Gaskell
Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell, née Stevenson , often referred to simply as Mrs Gaskell, was a British novelist and short story writer during the Victorian era...
. Thirkell published a new novel every year, which she referred to in correspondence with her editor, Jamie Hamilton of Hamish Hamilton
Hamish Hamilton
Hamish Hamilton Limited was a British book publishing house, founded in 1931 eponymously by the half-Scot half-American Jamie Hamilton . Confusingly, Jamie Hamilton was often referred to as Hamish Hamilton...
, as new wine in an old bottle. She professed horror at the idea that her circle of well educated and upper-middle-class friends might read her fiction: she expected them to prefer, as she did, such writers as Gibbon
Edward Gibbon
Edward Gibbon was an English historian and Member of Parliament...
, Austen
Jane Austen
Jane Austen was an English novelist whose works of romantic fiction, set among the landed gentry, earned her a place as one of the most widely read writers in English literature, her realism and biting social commentary cementing her historical importance among scholars and critics.Austen lived...
, Dickens
Charles Dickens
Charles John Huffam Dickens was an English novelist, generally considered the greatest of the Victorian period. Dickens enjoyed a wider popularity and fame than had any previous author during his lifetime, and he remains popular, having been responsible for some of English literature's most iconic...
, and Proust
Marcel Proust
Valentin Louis Georges Eugène Marcel Proust was a French novelist, critic, and essayist best known for his monumental À la recherche du temps perdu...
. She drew the epigraph to T 1951 from Proust: "Les gens du monde se représentent volontiers les livres comme une espèce de cube dont une face est enlevée, si bien que l'auteur se dépêche de 'faire entrer' dedans les personnes qu'il rencontre" ("Society people think that books are a sort of cube, one side of which the author opens the better to insert into it the people he meets.")
Her books of the 1930s in particular had a satiric exuberance, as in Pomfret Towers, which sends up village ways, aristocratic folly and middle-class aspirations. Three Houses (1931, Oxford University Press; repeatedly reprinted) is a short childhood memoir which simultaneously displays Thirkell's precociously finished style, her lifelong melancholy, and her idealization of her grandfather, Edward Burne-Jones. Trooper to the Southern Cross (1934; republished in 1939 as What Happened on the Boat) "is concerned with the experiences of a number of English and Australian passengers aboard a troop-ship, the Rudolstadt, on their way back to Australia immediately after World War I. It is particularly interesting for its depiction of the Australian 'digger'; his anti-authoritarianism, larrikinism, and, at the same time, his loyalty to those whom he respects."
In the 1940s, her work was coloured by the war and the war efforts. The home front figured particularly in Cheerfulness Breaks In (1940), showing how women saw their loved ones off to the front, and Northbridge Rectory, which showed how housewives coped with the annoyances of wartime life. These books include Marling Hall, Growing Up and The Headmistress, and provide a vibrant picture of the attitude, struggle, and resigned good cheer, of British women during the war. Even a book which did not deal exclusively with the war effort, Miss Bunting, addressed changes in society the war had wrought, as the title character, a governess, grows to middle age and wonders how to live out her life, and where her ambitions might take her as the world turns upside down. These books provide a time capsule of the age.
Later books in the 1950s became more romantic and less contemporary. Among these, The Old Bank House in particular shows Thirkell concerned with the rise of the merchant class, her own prejudices evident, but giving way to grudging respect for industriousness and goodhearted generosity. Later books are simpler romances. The romance The Duke's Daughter deals in a way more directly than some of her others with descendants of Trollope's Barsetshire characters. Her final book, Three Score and Ten, was left unfinished at her death, but was completed later by C. A. Lejeune
C. A. Lejeune
Caroline Alice Lejeune was a British writer, best known as the film critic of The Observer from 1928 to 1960.-Family:...
.
Thirkell showed a keen social sense and a lively eye for the telling detail of everyday life. Many of her books remain in print.
Further reading
- Barbara Burrell, Angela Thirkell's World: A Complete Guide to the People and Places of Barsetshire. http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1559212896.
- Tony Gould, "Inside Outsider: The Life and Times of Colin MacInnes" (Penguin, 1983). A well-written and extremely informative biography of Thirkell's second son, the novelist Colin MacInnes.
- Margot Strickland, Angela Thirkell: Portrait of a Lady Novelist (Gerald Duckworth & Co. Ltd, 1977). Unfortunately the only biography of Thirkell in existence, it is available from the author via the UK Angela Thirkell Society. The author received full cooperation from Thirkell's youngest son Lance. Both factually and tonally, her contempt for Thirkell's work is evident.
- The Land of Lost Content (M.A. thesis, Washington University, 1986): a more sympathetic interpretation of Thirkell's novels and her psychology
- A shorter—albeit slightly more critical—analysis of Thirkell was published in the New Yorker several years ago. Article by Lee, Hermione, New Yorker; 10/07/96, Vol. 72 Issue 30.
- Thirkell, Three Houses (1931, Oxford University Press; repeatedly reprinted)