Death: 19th December 1989Location: Highgate Cemetery (West), London, England
Photo taken by: Eddie Daley
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English novelist, poet and short-story writer, born in London. After studying journalism at University College, London, she worked for various papers, including the Evening Standard. In 1930 she was sacked from the Standard and began working on The Lady magazine.
Her first novel Cold Comfort Farm is a satire and parody of the pessimistic ruralism of Thomas Hardy, his followers and especially Precious Bane by Mary Webb. Cold Comfort Farm introduces a self-confident young woman, quite consciously modern, pragmatic, and optimistic, into the grim, fate-bound, and dark rural scene those novelists tended to portray.
She married the actor and singer Allan Webb in 1933, with whom she had a daughter. The success of Cold Comfort Farm enabled her to leave The Lady and devote herself full time to writing. She was made a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 1951, and in 1959 her husband Allan died. She published her last novel in 1970, but continued to write for her own pleasure.
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