Olivia Manning

A Woman at War

Deirdre David

The first literary biography of Olivia Manning
Includes discussion of previously unexamined manuscripts

Olivia Manning

A Woman at War

Deirdre David

Description

Olivia Manning: A Woman at War is the first literary biography of the twentieth-century novelist Olivia Manning. It tells the story of a writer whose life and work were shaped by her own fierce ambition, and, like many of her generation, the events and aftermath of the Second World War. From the time she left Portsmouth for London in the mid-1930s determined to become a famous writer, through her wartime years in the Balkans and the Middle East, and until her death in London in 1980, Olivia Manning was a dedicated and hard-working author. Married to a British Council lecturer stationed in Bucharest, Olivia Manning arrived in Romania on the 3rd September 1939, the fateful day when Allied forces declared war on Germany. For the duration of World War Two, she kept one step ahead of invading German forces as she and her husband fled Romania for Greece, and then Greece for the Middle East, where they stayed until the end of the war. These tumultuous wartime years are the subject of her best-known and most transparently autobiographical novels, The Balkan Trilogy and The Levant Trilogy.

Olivia Manning refused to be labelled a 'feminist,' but her novels depict with cutting insight and sardonic wit the marginal position of women striving for independent identity in arenas frequently controlled by men, whether on the frontlines of war or in the publishing world of the 1950s. However, she did not just write about World War Two and women's lives. Amongst other things, Manning published fiction about making do in Britain's post-war Age of Austerity, about desecration of the environment through uncontrolled development, and about the painful adjustment to post-war British life for young men. As the author of thirteen published novels, two volumes of short stories, several works of non-fiction, and a regular reviewer of contemporary fiction, she was a visible presence on the British literary scene throughout her life and her work provides a detailed insight into the period.

Grounded in thorough research and enriched by discussion of previously unexamined manuscripts and letters, Olivia Manning: A Woman at War is a timely study of Olivia Manning's remarkable life. Deirdre David integrates incisive critical analysis of Manning's writing with extensive discussion of the historical contexts of her fiction.

Olivia Manning

A Woman at War

Deirdre David

Introduction: 'Never a Day Without a Line'
'Laburnum Grove'
'The Most Terrifying City in the World'
'Bucharest'
'Escaping the Barbarians'
'The Dark Side of the World'
'Going Home'
'Writing in Austerity'
'The "Booksey Boys" and the Woman Writer'
'Watching History'
'A Strange Decade'
'A Deteriorating World'
'Down in the Dumps'
'The Stray Survivor'

Olivia Manning

A Woman at War

Deirdre David

Author Information

Deirdre David is Professor Emerita of English at Temple University. Throughout her long career she has taught courses in Victorian literature, the history of the British novel, and women's writing. She has published books dealing with social problems in the Victorian novel (Fictions of Resolution in Three Victorian Novels), the conflicted position of the woman intellectual in Victorian culture (Intellectual Women and Victorian Patriarchy), and the importance of British women in imperialism (Rule Britannia: Women, Empire, and Victorian Writing). She also edited The Cambridge Companion to the Victorian Novel, and co-edited Contemporary Dickens. She published her first biography in 2007, Fanny Kemble: A Performed Life, and continues to teach as a member of the Society of Senior Scholars at Columbia University.

Olivia Manning

A Woman at War

Deirdre David

Reviews and Awards

"How great was [Olivia Manning]? Deirdre David, who has written a rewarding book about Manning's life, treats her as a giant. Having read the two trilogies, and then Deirdre David's book as a follow-up, I feel bound to say that Ms. David is right--feel bound, that is, because Manning is still not getting the attention she deserves." --Clive James, author of Latest Readings

"Deirdre David makes a strong and deeply admiring case for Manning as an artist who broke the mould of the women's novel by writing about war from a new perspective, capturing its dislocation and fragmentariness through the portrait of a marriage; domesticating it, but not in comforting ways." --The Scotsman

"[A] clear-eyed, unsentimental and riveting biography." --Sunday Herald

"Deirdre David makes a strong and deeply admiring case for Manning as an artist who broke the mould of the women's novel by writing about war from a new perspective.... [A] timely reassessment of Manning's status." --Evening Standard

"Confident, well researched and engaging." --Times Higher Education

"David is an accomplished practitioner of the particular type of biographical recording she develops for her appreciation of Manning's life and works. Like her subject, she is good at the difficult arts of historical and narrative reconstruction. This book, drawing together Manning's many struggles, is a compelling account of a remarkable woman and her 20th-century stories." --New Statesman

"A study that is subtle, deeply researched and utterly absorbing." --Roy Foster, Irish Times

"[A] thorough literary biography--complete with concise critical appraisals of Manning's 13 novels and two volumes of short stories.... [David] is also clear-eyed about how Manning's combative attitude shaped, and was shaped by, her reputation for trouble among her literary contemporaries." --Wall Street Journal

"[An] outstanding new biography." --Open Letters Monthly

"Recommended." --Choice