Penelope Mortimer

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Penelope Ruth Mortimer , née Fletcher (born September 19, 1918 in Rhyl , Wales , † October 19, 1999 in Kensington , London , England ) was a British writer , screenwriter , film critic and journalist .

Life

Penelope Ruth Fletcher was born on September 19, 1918 to an Anglican cleric in Rhyl / Flintshire in the Wales area. Her father abused her during her childhood. She often changed schools. She later studied at University College London for a year . In 1937, at the age of 18, she married the journalist Charles Dimont, with whom she later had two daughters, including the future actress Caroline Mortimer . The marriage officially lasted until 1949. During this time, she had affairs with Kenneth Harrison and the poet Randall Swingler , which also resulted in two more daughters. During her last pregnancy, she met the lawyer and writer John Mortimer , whom she married in 1949 and with whom she had two more children, a son and a daughter. Marriage to Mortimer was also difficult. Both had extramarital affairs, so they divorced in 1971.

Mortimer made her debut as a writer in 1947 with the novel Johanna under the name Penelope Dimont . Her second novel "A Villa in Summer", which was published in 1954, finally appeared under the name Penelope Mortimer. These, as well as all subsequent novels, were received favorably by both the audience and the critics. The stories she wrote were mostly about difficult human situations, broken marriages, neuroses and nightmares. With her themes she gave "food" to the feminist scene of the 1960s. She later processed her difficult relationship experiences with her husbands in novels such as Daddy's Gone A-Hunting and The Pumpkin Eater . The latter was published in 1965 under the title Can you love Jake? in German and was filmed by Harold Pinter in 1964 under the title Bedroom dispute. Themes of her very personal development were the subject of the two novels "About Time" from 1979 and "About Time Too", which appeared in 1993.

In parallel to her writing, Mortimer also worked as a journalist. Among other things, she wrote for The New Yorker and worked as an advisor for the Daily Mail under the pseudonym Ann Temple . She later replaced Penelope Gilliatt as a film critic at the Observer . She also wrote for the British Sunday Times and in 1986 published Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother, a biography on Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon .

On October 19, 1999, Mortimer died in London at the age of 81 as a result of her cancer .

Works

Scripts
Novels
  • Johanna (1947)
  • A Villa in Summer (1954)
  • The Bright Prison (1956)
  • Daddy's Gone A-Hunting (1958)
  • The Pumpkin Eater (1962)
    • Can you love Jake? , Munich 1965
  • My Friend Says It's Bulletproof (1968)
  • The Home (1971)
  • Long Distance (1974)
  • The Handyman (1983)
Short story collections
  • Saturday Lunch with the Brownings (1977)
  • Humphrey's mother
Autobiographies
  • About Time: An Aspect of Autobiography (1979)
  • About Time Too: 1940-78 (1993)
biography
  • Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother (1986)
Travel report
  • With Love and Lizards (1957)

Web links