David Garnett
| David Garnett | |
|---|---|
 |
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| Born | 9 March 1892 |
| Died | 17 February 1981 (aged 88) |
| Spouse | Rachel Marshall Angelica Bell |
| Parents | Edward Garnett (1868-1937) Constance Black (1861-1946) |
David Garnett (9 March 1892 – 17 February 1981) was a British writer and publisher. As a child, he had a cloak made of rabbit skin and thus received the nickname "Bunny", by which he was known to friends and intimates all his life.
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[edit] Early life
Garnett was born in Brighton as the only child of Edward Garnett and translator of Russian Constance Garnett. As a conscientious objector in the First World War, he worked on fruit farms in Suffolk and Sussex with his lover, Duncan Grant.
[edit] Work
A prominent member of the Bloomsbury Group, Garnett received literary recognition when his novel Lady into Fox, an allegorical fantasy,[1] was awarded the 1922 James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction. He ran a bookshop near the British Museum with Francis Birrell during the 1920s. He also founded (with Francis Meynell) the Nonesuch Press. He wrote the novel Aspects of Love (1955), on which the later Andrew Lloyd-Webber musical was based.
[edit] Personal life
His first wife was illustrator Rachel "Ray" Marshall (1891–1940), sister of translator and diarist Frances Partridge. He and Ray, whose woodcuts appear in some of his books, had two sons, but she died relatively young of breast cancer.
Garnett was bisexual, as were several members of the artistic and literary Bloomsbury Group, and he had affairs with Francis Birrell and Duncan Grant. He was present at the birth of Grant's daughter, Angelica (by Vanessa Bell, and accepted by her husband Clive Bell), on 25 December 1918, and wrote to a friend shortly afterwards, "I think of marrying it. When she is 20, I shall be 46 – will it be scandalous?". When Angelica was in her early twenties, they did marry (on 8 May 1942), to the horror of her parents.
They had four daughters, in order, Amaryllis, Henrietta, and twins Nerissa and Frances; eventually the couple separated. Amaryllis Garnett (1943–1973) was an actress. Henrietta Garnett married Lytton Burgo Partridge, her father's nephew by his first wife Ray, but was left a widow with a newborn infant when she was 18[2]; she oversees the legacies of both David Garnett and Duncan Grant. Nerissa Garnett (1946-2004) was an artist, ceramicist, and photographer. Fanny Garnett resides in France.
[edit] Death
After his separation from Angelica, Garnett moved to France and lived at the Château de Charry,[citation needed] Montcuq (near Cahors), where he died in 1981. David Garnett was also known as Bunny Garnett. He lived in a pleasant house in the grounds of the Chateau de Charry leased to him by the owners, Jo and Angela D'Urville. He made friends among the local English community of the locality and lived there until his death, continuing to write.
[edit] Works
- Turgenev (1917)
- Dope Darling (1919) novel, as Leda Burke
- Lady into Fox (1922) novel
- A Man in the Zoo (1924) novel
- The Sailor's Return (1925) novel
- Go She Must! (1927) novel
- The Old Dove Cote (1928) stories
- A Voyage to the Island of the Articoles by André Maurois (1928) translator
- Never Be a Bookseller (1929) memoirs
- No Love (1929) novel
- The Grasshoppers Come (1931)
- A Terrible Day (1932)
- A Rabbit in the Air. Notes from a diary kept while learning to handle an aeroplane (1932)
- Pocahontas (1933)
- Letters from John Galsworthy 1900-1932 (1934)
- Beany-Eye (1935)
- The Letters of T. E. Lawrence (1938) editor
- The Battle of Britain (1941)
- War in the Air (1941)
- The Campaign in Greece and Crete (1942)
- The Novels of Thomas Love Peacock (1948) editor
- The Golden Echo (1953) autobiography (i)
- The Flowers of the Forest (1955) autobiography (ii)
- Aspects of Love (1955)
- A Shot in the Dark (1958)
- A Net for Venus (1959) novel
- The Familiar Faces (1962) autobiography (iii)
- Two by Two (1963) novel
- 338171 T. E. (Lawrence of Arabia) by Victoria Ocampo (1963) translator
- Ulterior Motives (1966) novel
- The White/Garnett Letters (1968) correspondence with T. H. White
- Carrington: Letters & Extracts From Her Diaries (1970)
- First 'Hippy' Revolution (1970)
- A Clean Slate (1971)
- The Sons of the Falcon (1972) novel
- Purl and Plain (1973) stories
- Plough Over the Bones (1973) novel
- The Master Cat (1974)
- Up She Rises (1977)
- Great Friends. Portraits of Seventeen Writers (1979)
- David Garnett. C.B.E. A Writer's Library (1983)
- The Secret History of PWE : The Political Warfare Executive, 1939-1945 (2002)
[edit] References
- Heilbrun, Carolyn G., The Garnett Family (1961), also on Richard Garnett, Jeremiah Garnett, Edward Garnett, Constance Garnett.
- ^ John Clute Lady into Fox, in Frank N. Magill, ed. Survey of Modern Fantasy Literature, Vol 2. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Salem Press, Inc., 1983. pp. 863-866.
- ^ Adam Kuper, "Incest & influence: the private life of bourgeois England" Harvard University Press, 2009, ISBN 0-674-03589-5, p.242
[edit] External links
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