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She Knew She Was Right
virago pbk,1988
- GenresShort StoriesFiction
294 pages, Paperback
First published February 25, 1971
About the author
Ivy Litvinov
44 books3 followersIvy Therese Low Litvinov (Russian: Айви Вальтеровна Литвинова) (4 June 1889 – 16 April 1977) was an English-Russian writer and translator, and wife of Soviet diplomat and foreign minister Maxim Litvinov. She was also known as Ivy Low, Ivy Litvinova or Ivy Litvinoff.
She was born into an Anglo-Jewish family. Her father Walter was a friend of H. G. Wells. In 1894 her father died, and in 1896 her mother Alice remarried to John Alexander (Sandy) Herbert, and published some novels under the name Alice Herbert. Early in 1916 Ivy Low married Maxim Litvinov, who at the time was a revolutionary exile living in London. They had two children, Mikhail (Misha) and Tatiana (Tanya).
Following the Russian Revolution Maxim returned home in 1918, and she followed him two years later. Maxim Litvinov became a prominent diplomat and served as People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs (foreign minister) from 1930 to 1939, and Soviet ambassador to the United States from 1941 to 1943. He died in 1951, having survived the purges of nearly all of his closest colleagues despite having fallen out of favour with Stalin on more than one occasion.
Apart from brief stays abroad as part of her husband's diplomatic service, she lived in the Soviet Union for most of her adult life before moving permanently to Hove, England in 1972. She died in 1977. Looking back on the precarious situation that Maxim and Ivy had faced in the Stalin era, George Kennan wrote "It is one of the wonders of the age that Ivy survived to die a natural death."
Ivy Low wrote the novels Growing Pains in 1913 and The Questing Beast in 1914, as well as His Master’s Voice: a Detective Story in 1930. She also wrote about a dozen short stories published in The New Yorker magazine beginning in the 1960s. A collection of short stories was published in book form as She Knew She Was Right.
She produced numerous translations of Russian literature into English, and also wrote or edited reference books for Russian-speaking learners of English. In the 1930s she supported the teaching of Basic English.
She was an early fan of D. H. Lawrence and spent six weeks visiting him and his soon-to-be wife Frieda in Tuscany in 1914. Later in life, she visited Stanford University while her husband was Soviet ambassador to the US, and spent a couple of days reading the university's collection of Lawrence's papers. She found "amusing references" to herself in his letters. In 1946 she wrote the article "A visit to D.H. Lawrence" in Harper's Bazaar.
She was born into an Anglo-Jewish family. Her father Walter was a friend of H. G. Wells. In 1894 her father died, and in 1896 her mother Alice remarried to John Alexander (Sandy) Herbert, and published some novels under the name Alice Herbert. Early in 1916 Ivy Low married Maxim Litvinov, who at the time was a revolutionary exile living in London. They had two children, Mikhail (Misha) and Tatiana (Tanya).
Following the Russian Revolution Maxim returned home in 1918, and she followed him two years later. Maxim Litvinov became a prominent diplomat and served as People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs (foreign minister) from 1930 to 1939, and Soviet ambassador to the United States from 1941 to 1943. He died in 1951, having survived the purges of nearly all of his closest colleagues despite having fallen out of favour with Stalin on more than one occasion.
Apart from brief stays abroad as part of her husband's diplomatic service, she lived in the Soviet Union for most of her adult life before moving permanently to Hove, England in 1972. She died in 1977. Looking back on the precarious situation that Maxim and Ivy had faced in the Stalin era, George Kennan wrote "It is one of the wonders of the age that Ivy survived to die a natural death."
Ivy Low wrote the novels Growing Pains in 1913 and The Questing Beast in 1914, as well as His Master’s Voice: a Detective Story in 1930. She also wrote about a dozen short stories published in The New Yorker magazine beginning in the 1960s. A collection of short stories was published in book form as She Knew She Was Right.
She produced numerous translations of Russian literature into English, and also wrote or edited reference books for Russian-speaking learners of English. In the 1930s she supported the teaching of Basic English.
She was an early fan of D. H. Lawrence and spent six weeks visiting him and his soon-to-be wife Frieda in Tuscany in 1914. Later in life, she visited Stanford University while her husband was Soviet ambassador to the US, and spent a couple of days reading the university's collection of Lawrence's papers. She found "amusing references" to herself in his letters. In 1946 she wrote the article "A visit to D.H. Lawrence" in Harper's Bazaar.
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
July 2, 2016
4.5 stars
Another treasure from Virago and I couldn’t resist the title because it is a play on the Trollope novel He Knew He Was Right. This is a collection of short stories, some are linked.
Ivy Low Litvinov was an English writer and translator (Russian) who married Maxim Litvinov a Bolshevik revolutionary and colleague of Lenin, in 1916. After the Russian Revolution she spent much of the remainder of her life in Russia. Her husband was a diplomat, periodically falling foul of Stalin, but holding high office as well. Litvinov’s life has been well documented by John Carswell; she wrote a few novels in her early years (Her early novels were notorious for their frank approach to female sexual attitudes), the short stories were written in the 1950s and 1960s, the time when most of her translation work was done. Litvinov was a strong character who knew her own mind. It is reported that Stalin said to Maxim Litvinov, “You have an extremely courageous and outspoken wife”.
The first four stories are set in England and are loosely based on Litvinov’s early life. A couple of the later ones are also set in England, all the rest in Russia.
In the early English stories one gets the sense of a life and times already disappeared. The Russian stories depict daily life in the Soviet Union in the 1940s and 50s. The shadow of the Gulag is in the background of the stories, often in a subtle way. There is little mention of ideology or Marxism; Litvinov gets her point across by her portrayal of human relationships. There is a devastating portrayal of familial unhappiness in Old Woman and The Boy who Laughed examines the effect disability has on a family. Apartheid is one of the better stories. It focuses on the Russian habit of renting a dacha for the summer. A bourgeois couple rent a dacha and find their landlady has her young granddaughter staying. Both sides try to keep the children apart; impossible, of course. Gradually the couple discover that the child’s mother is in a labour camp. The child innocently reports positive tales of her visits and becomes a rather sinister and uncomfortable figure forcing the couple and the reader to acknowledge something that was hidden.
The last story, “Pussy Cat Pussy Cat, Where Have You Been?” is an oddity and we see Russian society through the eyes of a cat and his ancestors. I’m not sure it quite works, but it is interesting and a clever way of getting a point across.
I enjoyed these stories and Litvinov has a very understated way of getting her point across; she uses language well and is especially strong on constructing a tenuous relationship and exploring the results (especially Portrait of a Lady and the linked story Flight from Bright Shores). The stories are noteworthy for their strong female characters (although the cat in the last story is male), often coping in difficult situations.
Litvinov is an interesting character and I will keep an eye open for her earlier work, but these are good stories and worth looking out for.
Another treasure from Virago and I couldn’t resist the title because it is a play on the Trollope novel He Knew He Was Right. This is a collection of short stories, some are linked.
Ivy Low Litvinov was an English writer and translator (Russian) who married Maxim Litvinov a Bolshevik revolutionary and colleague of Lenin, in 1916. After the Russian Revolution she spent much of the remainder of her life in Russia. Her husband was a diplomat, periodically falling foul of Stalin, but holding high office as well. Litvinov’s life has been well documented by John Carswell; she wrote a few novels in her early years (Her early novels were notorious for their frank approach to female sexual attitudes), the short stories were written in the 1950s and 1960s, the time when most of her translation work was done. Litvinov was a strong character who knew her own mind. It is reported that Stalin said to Maxim Litvinov, “You have an extremely courageous and outspoken wife”.
The first four stories are set in England and are loosely based on Litvinov’s early life. A couple of the later ones are also set in England, all the rest in Russia.
In the early English stories one gets the sense of a life and times already disappeared. The Russian stories depict daily life in the Soviet Union in the 1940s and 50s. The shadow of the Gulag is in the background of the stories, often in a subtle way. There is little mention of ideology or Marxism; Litvinov gets her point across by her portrayal of human relationships. There is a devastating portrayal of familial unhappiness in Old Woman and The Boy who Laughed examines the effect disability has on a family. Apartheid is one of the better stories. It focuses on the Russian habit of renting a dacha for the summer. A bourgeois couple rent a dacha and find their landlady has her young granddaughter staying. Both sides try to keep the children apart; impossible, of course. Gradually the couple discover that the child’s mother is in a labour camp. The child innocently reports positive tales of her visits and becomes a rather sinister and uncomfortable figure forcing the couple and the reader to acknowledge something that was hidden.
The last story, “Pussy Cat Pussy Cat, Where Have You Been?” is an oddity and we see Russian society through the eyes of a cat and his ancestors. I’m not sure it quite works, but it is interesting and a clever way of getting a point across.
I enjoyed these stories and Litvinov has a very understated way of getting her point across; she uses language well and is especially strong on constructing a tenuous relationship and exploring the results (especially Portrait of a Lady and the linked story Flight from Bright Shores). The stories are noteworthy for their strong female characters (although the cat in the last story is male), often coping in difficult situations.
Litvinov is an interesting character and I will keep an eye open for her earlier work, but these are good stories and worth looking out for.
January 15, 2010
Short stories set in England and Russia in the first half of the 20th century, some of which are interconnected, some not. The author's style and subject matter really remind me of E. M. Almedingen, another Anglo-Russian author.
The dust jacket has gorgeous black, red and yellow Art-Nouveau-style swirls. Maybe I'll upload it one of these days.
The dust jacket has gorgeous black, red and yellow Art-Nouveau-style swirls. Maybe I'll upload it one of these days.
September 12, 2018
I really enjoyed this collection of short stories, most are based in Russia in the 30s and involve ordinary woman and their lives. Beautifully written, highly recommended.
November 2, 2010
When I read this years ago I loved it so much I kept my library copy (paid for it of course). I couldn't let it go. I should re-read it.
Short stories of living in a young-ish Soviet Union by the English wife of a diplomat. (I think that's right anyway, I read this a long time ago.)
Short stories of living in a young-ish Soviet Union by the English wife of a diplomat. (I think that's right anyway, I read this a long time ago.)
February 11, 2023
There are 14 stories in this collection. I liked a number of them and liked several of them a lot. Another pleasant surprise from Virago Modern Classics. 🙂 🙃 Another person who is more or less forgotten that should not be forgotten.
Ivy (Low) Litvinov certainly has an interesting biography (see last part of review). She lived to be ~88 years old, which is remarkable since Stalin knew her, since her husband worked for him (it would seem that anybody who knew him would die a premature death). He told her husband “You have an extremely courageous and outspoken wife”.
What I also found fascinating is that apparently she had some of these stories in her head for close to 50 years, and she finally put them down to print when she was 80 years old! Neville Braybrooke wrote this in the Foreword:
• In 1960, during the year which Ivy spent in London, Manya Harari, who was running the Harvill Press, tried to persuade her to write a book about the celebrated leaders and statesmen that she had met in the Kremlin. Nothing came of the idea. When Ivy returned to Moscow the following year it was to settle down to her “Sorterbiography” (JimZ: a memoir I believe) which she later abandoned for a set of stories about ordinary Soviet people. The latter are her greatest literary achievement.
The first three stories in the collection were connected to each other, and I liked them a lot.
This collection is available for reading for free at the Internet Archive-Open Library.
Here are the story names and my ratings, and for most of them, when they were originally published in The New Yorker.
Reviews:
1. Any Day Now — The NYer, Date – 4.5 stars
2. She Knew She Was Right — The NYer, September 20, 1968 – 4.5 stars
3. Pru Girl — The NYer, Date – 3 stars
4. Call It Love — The NYer, November 21, 1969 – 3 stars
5. Apartheid — The NYer, September 11, 1970 – 3 stars
6. Babushka — The NYer, July 12, 1968 – 2 stars
7. Bright Shores, I: Portrait of a Lady, II: Flight from Bright Shores — The NYer, July 24, 1970 – 4 stars
8. The Boy Who Laughed — The NYer, October 23, 1970 – 2.5 stars
9. Holiday Home — The NYer, November 20, 1970 – 4.5 stars
10. Farewell to the Dacha — The NYer, September 8, 1967 – 4 stars
11. To Be a Daniel —– 1.5 stars
12. Sowing Asphodel — The NYer, April 15, 1966 – 1 stars
13. Old Woman — The NYer, June 8, 1973 – 3 stars
14. Pussy Cat, Pussy Cat, Where Have You Been? — Blackwoods Magazine, 1973 – 2.5 stars
Reviews:
• Feb 28, 1971, review of the original issue of the collection by NY Times reviewer Peter Rowley
• Fascinating article, the review of the collection is near the end of the article which is about Ivy Litvinov in general: https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v06/n...
Notes:
• Her papers are at the Hoover Library, Stanford University and include diaries, looks to me like short stories (some I did not recognize from the collection I read from) and correspondence. Looks like a treasure trove of stuff: https://oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13...
• This is from a blogger....she quite liked this collection as well as an earlier novel by her, “His Master’s Voice”. But check out the pictures of her bookshelves with all her Virago Modern Classics with their readily identifiable dark green covers! https://kaggsysbookishramblings.wordp...
• Interesting article on Ivy Litvinov: https://aeon.co/essays/the-peoples-am...
• Her mother had Ivy’s teeth extracted when she was 17. 😮 😮 “It is true that it was not unknown for working-class brides to have their teeth extracted to save their husbands money later on.....” https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v06/n...
From Wikipedia:
• She was born in London into an Anglo-Jewish family.[1] Her father Walter was a friend of H. G. Wells. In 1894 her father died, and in 1896 her mother Alice remarried to John Alexander (Sandy) Herbert, and published some novels under the name Alice Herbert. Early in 1916 Ivy Low married Maxim Litvinov,[2] who at the time was a revolutionary exile living in London. They had two children, Mikhail (Misha) and Tatiana (Tanya).
• Following the Russian Revolution Maxim returned home in 1918, and she followed him two years later. Maxim Litvinov became a prominent diplomat and served as People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs (foreign minister) from 1930 to 1939, and Soviet ambassador to the United States from 1941 to 1943. He died in 1951, having survived the purges of nearly all of his closest colleagues despite having fallen out of favour with Stalin on more than one occasion.
• Apart from brief stays abroad as part of her husband's diplomatic service, she lived in the Soviet Union for most of her adult life before moving permanently to Hove, England in 1972, where she died in 1977.[3] Looking back on the precarious situation that Maxim and Ivy had faced in the Stalin era, George Kennan wrote "It is one of the wonders of the age that Ivy survived to die a natural death."[4][5]
Ivy (Low) Litvinov certainly has an interesting biography (see last part of review). She lived to be ~88 years old, which is remarkable since Stalin knew her, since her husband worked for him (it would seem that anybody who knew him would die a premature death). He told her husband “You have an extremely courageous and outspoken wife”.
What I also found fascinating is that apparently she had some of these stories in her head for close to 50 years, and she finally put them down to print when she was 80 years old! Neville Braybrooke wrote this in the Foreword:
• In 1960, during the year which Ivy spent in London, Manya Harari, who was running the Harvill Press, tried to persuade her to write a book about the celebrated leaders and statesmen that she had met in the Kremlin. Nothing came of the idea. When Ivy returned to Moscow the following year it was to settle down to her “Sorterbiography” (JimZ: a memoir I believe) which she later abandoned for a set of stories about ordinary Soviet people. The latter are her greatest literary achievement.
The first three stories in the collection were connected to each other, and I liked them a lot.
This collection is available for reading for free at the Internet Archive-Open Library.
Here are the story names and my ratings, and for most of them, when they were originally published in The New Yorker.
Reviews:
1. Any Day Now — The NYer, Date – 4.5 stars
2. She Knew She Was Right — The NYer, September 20, 1968 – 4.5 stars
3. Pru Girl — The NYer, Date – 3 stars
4. Call It Love — The NYer, November 21, 1969 – 3 stars
5. Apartheid — The NYer, September 11, 1970 – 3 stars
6. Babushka — The NYer, July 12, 1968 – 2 stars
7. Bright Shores, I: Portrait of a Lady, II: Flight from Bright Shores — The NYer, July 24, 1970 – 4 stars
8. The Boy Who Laughed — The NYer, October 23, 1970 – 2.5 stars
9. Holiday Home — The NYer, November 20, 1970 – 4.5 stars
10. Farewell to the Dacha — The NYer, September 8, 1967 – 4 stars
11. To Be a Daniel —– 1.5 stars
12. Sowing Asphodel — The NYer, April 15, 1966 – 1 stars
13. Old Woman — The NYer, June 8, 1973 – 3 stars
14. Pussy Cat, Pussy Cat, Where Have You Been? — Blackwoods Magazine, 1973 – 2.5 stars
Reviews:
• Feb 28, 1971, review of the original issue of the collection by NY Times reviewer Peter Rowley
• Fascinating article, the review of the collection is near the end of the article which is about Ivy Litvinov in general: https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v06/n...
Notes:
• Her papers are at the Hoover Library, Stanford University and include diaries, looks to me like short stories (some I did not recognize from the collection I read from) and correspondence. Looks like a treasure trove of stuff: https://oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13...
• This is from a blogger....she quite liked this collection as well as an earlier novel by her, “His Master’s Voice”. But check out the pictures of her bookshelves with all her Virago Modern Classics with their readily identifiable dark green covers! https://kaggsysbookishramblings.wordp...
• Interesting article on Ivy Litvinov: https://aeon.co/essays/the-peoples-am...
• Her mother had Ivy’s teeth extracted when she was 17. 😮 😮 “It is true that it was not unknown for working-class brides to have their teeth extracted to save their husbands money later on.....” https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v06/n...
From Wikipedia:
• She was born in London into an Anglo-Jewish family.[1] Her father Walter was a friend of H. G. Wells. In 1894 her father died, and in 1896 her mother Alice remarried to John Alexander (Sandy) Herbert, and published some novels under the name Alice Herbert. Early in 1916 Ivy Low married Maxim Litvinov,[2] who at the time was a revolutionary exile living in London. They had two children, Mikhail (Misha) and Tatiana (Tanya).
• Following the Russian Revolution Maxim returned home in 1918, and she followed him two years later. Maxim Litvinov became a prominent diplomat and served as People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs (foreign minister) from 1930 to 1939, and Soviet ambassador to the United States from 1941 to 1943. He died in 1951, having survived the purges of nearly all of his closest colleagues despite having fallen out of favour with Stalin on more than one occasion.
• Apart from brief stays abroad as part of her husband's diplomatic service, she lived in the Soviet Union for most of her adult life before moving permanently to Hove, England in 1972, where she died in 1977.[3] Looking back on the precarious situation that Maxim and Ivy had faced in the Stalin era, George Kennan wrote "It is one of the wonders of the age that Ivy survived to die a natural death."[4][5]
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews