Francis Wyndham

Francis Guy Percy Wyndham (born July 2, 1924 in London - † December 28, 2017 ) was a British writer and journalist .

life and work

Francis Wyndham was born in London in 1924, where he lived to the end. His father, Guy Percy Wyndham, came from an important family and had a successful military career. His mother Violet Lutetia Leverson was the daughter of the writer Ada Leverson , the closest friend of Oscar Wilde . The family was also in contact with Pablo Picasso , Marcel Proust and James Joyce .

Francis Wyndham dealt with memories of his childhood in the idyllic isolation of Wiltshire shortly before the start of World War II in his novel The Other Garden (1987). From 1940 he attended Eton College . After graduating, he lived in Oxford for a year before being drafted into the army. Because he suffered from tuberculosis , he was released from service and returned to London. He worked for the Times , later for Derek Verschoyle and as an editor for André Deutsch . He then took a job at Queen Magazine, where he wrote first theater and later literary reviews. In 1964 he followed Mark Boxer to the Sunday Times , for which he conducted numerous interviews until 1980.

In his works, Francis Wyndham followed the tradition of Henry James and Jane Austen . His novel The Other Garden (1987) as well as his two volumes of short stories Out of the War (1974) and Mrs Henderson and Other Stories (1985) experienced a comeback in Great Britain and the United States. In 1987, Francis Wyndham received the Whitbread First Novel Award for his novel The Other Garden .

In addition to his own writing activities, Wyndham has provided encouragement and inspiration to various authors, such as Bruce Chatwin , VS Naipaul , Jean Rhys and Edward St Aubyn . After Jean Rhys's death, Wyndham was her literary administrator and, together with Diana Melly, edited a collection of selected letters by the author ( Jean Rhys letters 1931–1966 ).

Awards

• 1987: Whitbread First Novel Award

Works

• With David King : Trotsky: A Documentary . A.Lane, 1972, ISBN 0713903341 .
• Out of the war . Duckworth, London 1974, ISBN 0-7156-0866-5 .
• Mrs Henderson and Other Stories . Jonathan Cape Ltd., London 1985, ISBN 0-224-02306-3 .
• The Other Garden . Jonathan Cape Ltd., London 1987, ISBN 0-224-02475-2 .
  • German The Other Garden , 2010, ISBN 978-3-908777-57-1 .
• The Theater of Embarrassment . Chatto & Windus, London 1991, ISBN 0-7011-3726-6 .

Edited volumes:

• The Collected Fiction of Francis Wyndham . Foreword by Alan Hollinghurst . Vintage, London 1992, ISBN 0-09-919091-5 .
  • Reprint: The Other Garden and Collected Stories . Picador, London 2008, ISBN 978-0-330-45720-0 .
  • Reprint: The Complete Fiction . New York Review of Books, 2009, ISBN 978-1-590-17312-1 .

As editor:

• Jean Rhys letters 1931-1966 . André Deutsch, London 1984 (co-editor)

Web links

• Literature by and about Francis Wyndham in the catalog of the German National Library
• Interview on guardian.co.uk
• Interview The Independent
• Biogram of the New York Review of Book
• Review on Spectator Book club

Individual evidence

1. ^ Francis Wyndham obituary , theguardian.com, January 9, 2018, accessed January 10, 2018