Antonia White: a Life

by Jane Dunn

Antonia White is best known for the autobiographical quartet of novels that began with her pre-World War I adolescence in a Catholic convent ( Frost in May ) and ended with institutionalisation for manic depression in the 1920s. ( Beyond the Glass ). More infamously, White's three unsuccessful marriages, her affairs, and her tortuous relationship with her two daughters and their subsequent feud over the editing of White's diaries after her death, have been extensively chronicled. Biographer Jane Dunn, who has also covered other literary lives--Mary Shelley in Moon in Eclipse and sisters Vanessa Bell and Virginia Woolf in A Very Close Conspiracy --plunges with relish into White's complex world. She portrays White as a highly talented writer whose Catholicism and father-fixation contributed much to her low self-worth, problematic relationships and recurring bouts of madness. Despite this, White, unusually for a woman in the 1930s, held down a lucrative job as an advertising copywriter, became a highly respected translator (her translations of the novels of Colette are among the best), and moved within an intensely artistic circle of friends which included Djuna Barnes, David Gascoyne and Dylan Thomas. White's allegedly low opinion of women was compounded just before her death, with the newly launched Virago publishing house choosing Frost in May (1978) as its first rediscovery. The continuing republication of White's novels and her astonishingly frank diary have captivated new generations of readers. Jane Dunn's skilful, intelligent biography ensures that this interest will not abate. -- Catherine Taylor

Genres: Nonfiction, Biography

400 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1998

About the author

Jane Dunn is a leading biographer, the author of Moon in Eclipse: A Life of Mary Shelley, A Very Close Conspiracy: Vanessa Bell and Virginia Wolf, and Antonia White: A Life. Elizabeth and Mary: Cousins, Rivals, Queens was published in the spring of 2003 and spent seven weeks in the top ten of the Sunday Times bestseller list. A fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, Dunn lives near Bath with her husband, the linguist and writer Nicholas Ostler. Her most recent book is Read My Heart.

Reviews

[Moira · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very dry, but large-scale and worthwhile, even if there is almost no literary analysis of the actual novels in it. The contrast with this book was painful, nearly.

[Paula Gill · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this book. An interesting person with an interesting life .

[Rose · Rating 4 out of 5]

A biography of a writer who despite her problems was able to write classic novels about her life. In parts a very sad story. Nice selection of photographs.