The Swan In The Evening
Fragments of an Inner Life
Published on 21. October 1982
Book
Paperback/Softback
176 pages
978-0-86068-299-8 (ISBN)
Description
Rosamond Lehmann, one of the most distinguished British writers of this century, published eight acclaimed works of fiction. Her only autobiographical work, The Swan in the Evening, recreated first the child she was and the experiences that made her the woman she became, moving on to tell the story of her beloved daughter Sally and the tragedy of her early death at the age of twenty-four. Then, tentatively and persuasively, Rosamond Lehmann relates the totally unexpected, overwhelming and scrupulously recorded psychic and mystical experiences she underwent following that terrible loss. The meaning of such events, their messages of hope and comfort to others she then, through a letter to her grandaughter, passes to us.
Reviews / Votes
Full of her sensibility, her funniness, her own peculiar acumen -- Elizabeth Jane Howard Lehmann legitimised a type of writing that took on deep personal themes like power relationships within families, translated through the distorted lens of memory-writing that, like Lehmann's, moves the reader deeply -- English PEN A model of selection and compression . . . Combines something of the earthiness of Colette with the imaginative insight of Virginia Woolf -- Cyril Connolly While the title keys the mood here, furthered by a prose style as opalescent as a moonstone, the sub-title really defines this memoir which is 'sub-autobiographical' or interior * Kirkus Reviews * A model of selection and compression ... combines something of the earthiness of Colette with the imaginative insight of Virginia Woolf * Cyril Connolly * Full of her sensibility, her funniness, her own peculiar acumen * Elizabeth Jane Howard *More details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
London
United Kingdom
Publishing group
Little, Brown Book Group
Product notice
Paperback (trade)
Dimensions
Height: 196 mm
Width: 126 mm
Thickness: 17 mm
Weight
128 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-86068-299-8 (9780860682998)
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Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
E-Book
03/2013
Virago Press Ltd
€3.99
Available for download
Person
Rosamond Lehmann (1901-1990) was born on the day of Queen Victoria's funeral, in Buckinghamshire, England, the second of four children. In 1927, a few years after graduating from the University of Cambridge, she published her first novel, Dusty Answer, to critical acclaim and instantaneous celebrity. Lehmann continued to write and publish between 1930 and 1976, penning works including The Weather in the Streets, The Ballad and the Source, and the short memoir The Swan in the Evening. Lehmann was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in 1982 and remains one of the most distinguished novelists of the twentieth century.