Monday 2 December 2013

E.M. Delafield

It is 70 years ago today that E.M. Delafield died, much too young, at her home in Devon.  She had been ill for some time, enduring the rather primitive treatments for cancer that were available in the 1940s, but had kept up her cheerful spirits almost until the end - Kate O'Brien remembers her climbing a fig tree in the garden in September 1943, and according to Maurice McCullen she was giving a lecture in Oxford just days before her death.  I had the great privilege of visiting the Delafield archive at the University of British Columbia earlier this year, and of reading the opening chapter of the novel she never finished, an appetising combination of marital disharmony and intergenerational conflict spiced with wartime tensions.  It was impossible not to imagine the witty and moving book this could have made, and the picture of wartime Britain that it would have left us, and then all the other novels that EMD might have written.  By the late 1930s she was really in her stride as a writer; where would her work have gone next?

EMD has been the topic of my PhD thesis and I've spent the last four years reading her novels, short stories, journalism and plays.  When I started the thesis I was slightly nervous of focusing it on her work, wondering if I would get sick of it after several years' intimate acquaintance.  Thankfully, I haven't at all; sometimes I find her work frustrating, sometimes challenging, but always and endlessly interesting.  Middlebrow fiction is supposed to be slight and amusing, but Delafield's work repays re-reading with a careful eye; there can be an awful lot going on in her most frivolous works.  One of the things that is usually going on, of course, is humour, and her jokes also stand up to repeated scrutiny.  The more I read, the more I find to admire, and the more of her journalism I read the more I am amazed by her work ethic.  How on earth did she find the time to write all that?

One of the reasons that I love EMD and the women writers of her generation is that really, they weren't supposed to be there.  A whole generation of women - Virginia Woolf, Rose Macaulay, Vera Brittain, May Sinclair, Sylvia Townsend Warner, the list goes on and on  - who were brought up in the vague expectation that they would probably marry, who scraped up what education they could get, often against the wishes of their parents, and who somehow transformed themselves into writers, critics and campaigners.  Instead of disappearing from view into respectable matrimony, they left us their books. Anyone who has suffered from impostor syndrome (probably nearly everyone) can take heart from their lives.

There is a particular significance to the seventieth anniversary of a writer's death; in the UK at least, their works come out of copyright in the following year.  I expect we'll see a lot more new editions of Delafield next year, which is good news for her fans.  But I really wish she'd made it to her eighties, and written the novels she probably had planned.

12 comments:

  1. There's an E.M. Delafield archive at UBC? I feel rather ashamed that I didn't know that before. I'll have to wander over one day and check it out.

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  2. Yes, her daughter emigrated to Canada and gave the archive to her local university. The archive staff are very friendly and helpful. I spent a very pleasant five days at UBC and as a bonus was there at cherry blossom time.

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  3. Where are you now? I would love to meet you or at least correspond. I have been working on a book about EMD for the last few years, since she's my husband's grandmother and we have the family's story to tell. I will email you at your U S email address, if that's okay.

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  5. Hello! Do please email me at my Sussex address, it would be great to hear from a member of the family and I'd love to know more about your project. And thanks very much for visiting my blog.

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  6. Lovely post, Tanya, and how I envy you those archives. I'm hoping there is a spate of EMD reprints now, preferably in lovely editions rather than POD. I do wish Persephone had lined up one of her hard to find novels, rather than yet another Provincial Lady edition.

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  7. *wavingfromLosAngeles*

    we adore E. M. Delafield.

    and completely agree with you regarding the transcending of common fates by those indomitable female writers -

    glorious.

    _teamgloria

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  8. Lovely post. EMD is one of my favourite authors although that's mostly based on the PL books. I hope there are lots of new editions of her work over the next few years. I also agree with you about that generation of women, they were so inspiring, especially as their lives often went in unexpected directions after WWII.

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  9. I adore EMD, too. We could do with a new biography. I enjoyed the Violet Powell's book but perhaps there is room for another one.

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  10. Its great to see the continued interest in my Grandmother, EMD. It may interest you to know that she is still active in the sense that we continue to receive small amounts of money from her books that I put in an educational fund for her great great grandchildren.

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  11. Hello Simon, thank you for visiting and commenting - how lovely to hear from another member of the family. I'm delighted to hear that EMD's hard work is still paying off for her family as well as bringing so much pleasure to her many admirers.

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