Ivy Compton-Burnett (1884-1969) was one of twentieth-century
England's most admired writers. The seventh of thirteen children,
she was raised in Richmond and Hove and studied Classics at Royal
Holloway College. Her family was struck by repeated disasters
starting with the death of her father in 1901; Compton-Burnett
eventually took charge of the household until it was broken up
during the First World War.
Compton-Burnett lived alone in London until she was joined in 1919
by Margaret Jourdain, a writer and furniture expert who was to be
her lifelong companion. Aside from a disavowed early novel,
Compton-Burnett published eighteen highly acclaimed works of
fiction in her lifetime, won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize
and was made a Dame shortly before her death.
'Ivy Compton-Burnett is one of the most original, artful and
elegant writers of our century. To read her for the first time is a
singular experience' - Hilary Mantel
'As much a part of our great 20th-century literary heritage as
Virginia Woolf or Elizabeth Bowen... She writes wonderfully, giving
her often ghastly characters mordantly witty lines worthy of
Dorothy Parker or Oscar Wilde' - Guardian
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