Women Writers
Past display archive
9 December 2006 - 17 June 2007
Room 31 showcase
Free
Nancy Mitford
by Cecil Beaton
1950s
NPG x40261
'Being single, and having some money, and having the time - having no men, you see' was how the writer Ivy Compton-Burnett rather bluntly explained why so many women were writing fiction after the First World War. The photographic portraits in this display were made in the period 1920 to1960 when the majority of fiction was written by women, a phenomenon that can also be explained by improved access to education and society's growing acceptance of the working woman.
The writers of this new wave of women's fiction were professional and prolific - by the age of thirty-two Pamela Frankau had published twenty books and Enid Blyton could produce a children's book in five working days. The popular romance writer Ruby Ayres declared she 'wrote for money' and in 1955 told the Daily Mail about her creative process; 'First I fix the price, then I fix the title, then I write the book'. She could write as many as 20,000 words a day.
Noel Streatfeild
by Bassano Ltd
27 November 1936
NPG x26637
Virginia Woolf believed that women's fiction in the 1920s was 'far more genuine and far more interesting to-day than it was a hundred or even fifty years ago'. The diversity of women writers over these four decades is remarkable. This display includes crime, romance and children's writers, literary and 'middle-brow' novelists, and those who tackled issues of female sexuality, and faced scandal. The photographers in this collection include Paul Tanqueray, Cecil Beaton and Man Ray; the images range from studio portraits to portraits of the writer at work.
Related portraits
- Virginia Woolf (NPG P170)
- Elizabeth Bowen (NPG P869(5))
- Rose Macaulay (NPG P869(19))
- Angela Brazil (NPG x19821)
- Margaret Ethel ('Storm') Jameson (NPG x89974)
- Daphne Du Maurier (NPG x9095)
- Richard Bagnold Jones; Enid Algerine Bagnold ('Lady Jones'); Laurian (née Jones), comtesse d'Harcourt (NPG x124177)
- Imogen Clare Holst (NPG x126817)
- Dame Barbara Hamilton Cartland (NPG x49979)
- Ethel Edith Mannin (NPG x14264)
- Kate O'Brien (NPG x11731)
- Dodie Smith (NPG x46529)
- George Egerton (Mary Chavelita Dunne) (NPG x94119)
- Lady Cynthia Mary Evelyn Asquith (née Charteris) (NPG x90235)
- Radclyffe Hall (NPG x10422)
- Dame Rebecca West (Cicily Isabel Andrews (née Fairfield)) (NPG x23917)
- Ruby Mildred Ayres (NPG x10333)
- Margery Allingham (NPG x2396)
- Noel Streatfeild (NPG x26637)
- Rosamond Nina Lehmann (NPG x23299)
- Dorothy Sayers (NPG x2323)
- Georgette Heyer (NPG x20987)
- Pamela Frankau (NPG x89281)
- Enid Blyton; Gillian Mary Baverstock (née Pollock); Imogen Pollock (NPG x128508)
- Nancy Mitford (NPG x40261)
- Doris Lessing (NPG x88216)
- Dame Ivy Compton-Burnett (NPG x22416)
Related sitters
- Margery Louise Allingham
- Lady Cynthia Mary Evelyn Asquith (née Charteris)
- Ruby Mildred Ayres
- Enid Algerine Bagnold ('Lady Jones')
- Gillian Mary Baverstock (née Pollock)
- Enid Mary Blyton
- Elizabeth Bowen
- Angela Brazil
- Dame Barbara Hamilton Cartland
- Dame Ivy Compton-Burnett
- Laurian (née Jones), comtesse d'Harcourt
- Dame Daphne Du Maurier
- George Egerton (Mary Chavelita Dunne)
- Pamela Sydney Frankau
- Nancy Freeman-Mitford
- Radclyffe Hall (Marguerite Antonia Radclyffe-Hall)
- Georgette Heyer
- Imogen Clare Holst
- Margaret Ethel ('Storm') Jameson
- Richard Bagnold Jones
- Rosamond Nina Lehmann
- Doris May Lessing
- Dame (Emilie) Rose Macaulay
- Ethel Edith Mannin
- Kate O'Brien (née Kathleen Mary Louise O'Brien)
- Imogen Pollock
- Dorothy Leigh Sayers
- Dodie Smith
- (Mary) Noel Streatfeild
- Dame Rebecca West (Cicily Isabel Andrews (née Fairfield))
- Virginia Woolf (née Stephen)