Elizabeth Jenkins

Margaret Elizabeth Jenkins (born October 31, 1905 in Hitchin , Hertfordshire , † September 5, 2010 in Hampstead , London ) was a British writer , storyteller and biographer .

Her biographies of Jane Austen , Caroline Lamb , Henry Fielding and Elizabeth I of England earned her the reputation of being one of Britain's leading authors.

biography

Acquaintance with Virginia Woolf and literary debut

Margaret Elizabeth Jenkins, whose father founded the Caldicott Preparatory School in Hitchin in 1904 , studied English language and history after attending school at Newnham College , the college for women at the University of Cambridge founded in 1871 , at which women take exams at that time, but could not acquire any degrees .

Through the headmistress Pernel Strachey, sister of the biographer and member of the Bloomsbury Group , Lytton Strachey , she came into contact with Edith Sitwell , Leonard Sidney and Virginia Woolf . She found their company intellectually appealing, but rude and uncomfortable. Virginia Woolf's description of Elizabeth Jenkins' first novel Virginia Water (1929) as "a sweet white grape of a book" could not erase this impression.

Despite good reviews for her first story and a contract for three more books with the publisher Victor Gollancz , she began teaching English at King Alfred's School in Hampstead, where she stayed until the outbreak of World War II . During this time she wrote two of her most admired biographies, Lady Caroline Lamb (1932) and Jane Austen (1938), as did Harriet (1934), the cool tale about the suffering of a mentally retarded woman whose husband, a scheming employee, was about her of her money.

In 1940 she helped found the Jane Austen Society and took part in efforts to purchase Chawton House , which Austen spent the last eight years of her life and which is now a museum . During the Second World War she was a member of the Assistance Board , an institution that helped Jewish refugees and the victims of German air raids on London . She later worked on the Board of Trade and the Ministry of Information.

Stories and biographies after the Second World War

In Six Criminal Women (1949) she presented short stories about two murderers, a pickpocket, a blackmailer and a marriage swindler who lived between the 14th and 19th centuries. She drew a more pleasant series of figures in Ten Fascinating Women (1955).

She is particularly valued for her novel The Turtoise and the Hare (1954), the story of a crumbling marriage between a barrister and his desperate wife, which Hilary Mantel described in The Sunday Times in 1993 as "as fine and tempting as a bowl of cream" Author “seems to know very well how women think and how their lives are; what women conspire, what they fear. "

Elizabeth Jenkins became known to a wider audience as the author of psychologically astute, stylishly written, accessible biographies, most of which dealt with important literary or historical figures. However, in Joseph Lister (1960) she described the life of the English doctor , who is considered to be the pioneer of sterilization in medicine , and in Dr. Gully's Story (1972) she reconstructed a love triangle between murder and love in the Victorian era .

Elizabeth the Great (1958), her biography on Elizabeth I of England, most effectively showed her biographical talent. Although she relied on the standard historical sources, she added a psychological dimension to her portrait that other historians omitted. Historian Garrett Mattingly wrote in a book review that she “really isn't much interested in war and diplomacy, politics and finance.” He believes that her specialty is the human heart. He added: “We believe Elizabeth Jenkins because she is imaginative Insight and instinctive sympathy turns characters from a remote history game into real, living and three-dimensional characters in a narrative. "

She returned to the Elizabethan Age in Elizabeth and Leicester (1961) and also wrote The Mystery of King Arthur (1975) and The Princess in the Tower (1978).

In 2004 her memoir was published under the title The View From Downshire Hill .

Her other stories included:

• Doubtful Joy (1935),
• The Phoenix 'Nest (1936),
• Robert and Helen (1944),
• Brightness (1963),
• Honey (1968).

Web links

• William Grimes: Elizabeth Jenkins, Woman of Letters, Dies at 104. In: New York Times. September 8, 2010.