Geoffrey Dennis

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Geoffrey Pomeroy Dennis (born January 20, 1892 in Barnstaple , † May 15, 1963 ) was a British writer who was awarded the Hawthornden Prize in 1930 .

Life

Dennis was the youngest child of grocer Thomas Austen Dennis (1844–1926) and his second wife Annie nee. Handford (1853-1892). The family belonged to the " Open Brothers ".

After finishing school, Dennis worked for three years in the office of a real estate agent, then studied at Oxford and served in the First World War . From 1920 to 1937 he worked for the League of Nations in Geneva , most recently as editor-in-chief and head of the documents department. He was then head of the Italian division of the BBC's European service . From 1949 to 1957 he worked as an English editor at UNESCO in Paris .

His first novel Mary Lee (1922) describes the childhood and adolescence of a girl who grew up in the 1850s and 1860s in the same religious milieu as the author later. For his novel The End of the World Dennis received the renowned Hawthornden Prize in 1930. In the book he deals with a possible end of the world from a contemporary perspective. In 1937 the book Coronation Commentary followed , a critical account of the coronation of Edward VIII in 1936, which earned him a defamation suit from Winston Churchill .

In the same year Dennis worked under the pseudonym "Barum Browne" with the writer Hilary Saint George Saunders . His autobiographical book Till Seven was most recently published in 1957 by Eyre & Spottiswoode.

family

In 1926 Dennis married the League of Nations secretary Doris Ethel Hall (* 1898), who died in Geneva the following year. In 1928 he married Imogene Lucy Cristina Maria Rossetti Angeli (1904–1993), a granddaughter of William Michael Rossetti and Lucy Madox Brown, in London . They had two children: Emmanuel Calmedy Rossetti Dennis (* 1929) and Helen Annie Handford Dennis (* 1932).

Works

  • Mary Lee , 1922
  • Harvest in Poland , 1925
  • Declaration of Love: Undiplomatic Correspondence between Paris and Berlin , 1927
  • The End of the World , 1930
  • Sale by Auction , 1932 (American edition: The Red Room )
  • Bloody Mary’s , 1934
  • Coronation Commentary , 1937
  • The Devil and XYZ , 1937 (with Hilary Saint George Saunders )
  • Till Seven , 1957

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b Dennis, Geoffrey Pomeroy , in: Who's Who & Who Was Who .
  2. ^ A b Geoffrey Pomeroy Dennis , in: FamilySearch .
  3. ↑ C [laude] D [enny]: Vient de paraître: Geoffrey Dennis: La Fin du Monde. In: La Nouvelle Revue Française 23 (1935), p. 66.
  4. ^ A b A. C. Ward: Longman Companion to Twentieth Century Literature , Longman, London 1970, p. 168.
  5. ↑ Clarence L. Barnhart, William D. Halsey (Eds.): The New Century Handbook of English Literature , Appleton-Century-Crofts, New York 1956, p. 327.
  6. ^ Henry Pelling: Winston Churchill , Macmillan, Basingstoke 1974, p. 415 .
  7. ^ Miss Doris Ethel Hall , in: League of Nations Search Engine .
  8. ↑ DENNIS Doris Ethel , in: National Probate Calendar , 1927.
  9. ↑ Imogenes mother Helen Maria Madox Rossetti Angeli (1879–1969) was also a secretary at the League of Nations for several years (see League of Nations Search Engine ).
personal data
SURNAME Dennis, Geoffrey
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Dennis, Geoffrey Pomeroy (full name); Browne, Barum (pseudonym)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British writer
DATE OF BIRTH January 20, 1892
PLACE OF BIRTH Barnstaple
DATE OF DEATH May 15, 1963