THE LIFE OF IVY COMPTON-BURNETT

by Elizabeth Sprigge ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 1, 1973

For over fifty years Ivy Compton-Burnett wrote her sere, stylized chorales of Men and Wives, Brothers and Sisters, Parents and Children -- always the same configurations with parallel themes -- twenty in all. Miss Sprigge prepared her last book for posthumous publication in 1971 and she was an old and good friend. She is also a decorous ""authoress"" and not a very revealing biographer although this memoir certainly devotes as much space to the books as they appeared, and to the increasing attention they occasioned, as to her ""life."" No corpus was ever more sui generis and, as the TLS once noted, the next novel was always like ""resuming a conversation temporarily ceased but not ended."" Or as Kenneth Tynan said (not included here) ""sheer talk, weird and knobbly."" One suspects that there must have been equally weird (behind that queer banded coiffure) and knobbly aspects to her personality. Compton-Burnett came from a large family; she settled on first one brother, then another (both died young) as the ""center-piece"" of her life; the family dissolved and she spent several decades of companionable living with Margaret Jourdain (she defined Margaret and herself as ""neuters""); she had literary friends and admirers; she lived quietly and wrote the novels which were insular, epigrammatic, singular and acute -- a taste to be acquired by many people. No doubt they will be attracted to the Sprigge book if disappointed since friendship has been primarily served.

Pub Date: April 1, 1973

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Braziller

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1973

Categories: NONFICTION