Dorothy Whipple (1893–1966)
Autor de Someone at a Distance
Sobre El Autor
Obras de Dorothy Whipple
Wednesday and other stories 3 copias
Mrs. Puss and that kitten 1 copia
Obras relacionadas
Etiquetado
Conocimiento común
- Otros nombres
- Stirrup, Dorothy (birth name)
- Fecha de nacimiento
- 1893-02-26
- Fecha de fallecimiento
- 1966-09-14
- Género
- female
- Nacionalidad
- UK
- Lugar de nacimiento
- Blackburn, Lancashire, England, UK
- Lugar de fallecimiento
- Blackburn, Lancashire, England, UK
- Lugares de residencia
- Blackburn, Lancashire, England, UK
Nottingham, Nottinghamshire, England, UK - Ocupaciones
- fiction writer
novelist
memoirist
children's book author - Biografía breve
- Dorothy Whipple, née Stirrup, grew up in Blackburn, England, in the large, close-knit family of Walter Stirrup, an architect, and his wife Ada. She worked as a secretary to Henry Whipple, an educational administrator who was a widower 24 years her senior; they married in 1917 and moved to Nottingham. Here she wrote Young Anne (1927), the first of nine successful novels that included High Wages (1930), Greenbanks (1932), The Priory (1939) and Because of the Lockwoods (1949). Two of them, They Knew Mr. Knight (1934) and They Were Sisters (1943) were adapted into British films. She also published collections of short stories, including The Closed Door and Other Stories and Every Good Deed and Other Stories, several children's books, and two volumes of memoirs. Someone at a Distance (1953) was her final novel. Random Commentary: Books and Journals Kept from 1925 Onwards, was published in 1966 after her death, and provides glimpses of her earliest successes as an author and her impressions of life during World War II.
Miembros
Reseñas
The Priory centres around a once-grand English stately home in the interwar years, and the lives of the family who live there and some of their servants. This is the first Dorothy Whipple that I've read, and I found this is a book to sink into: part comedy of manners, part low-key melodrama. While some aspects of the book feel a little dated from a 2020s perspective, Whipple showed a deft touch with creating rounded characters and having them respond believably to the changes that buffet them. I particularly liked her keen awareness of how hemmed in a woman's choices were in this time. The ending is perhaps a little pat, and there's no way Whipple could have known what changes a matter of months would bring to the political landscape of Europe, but I still enjoyed this and will look out for more of her work.… (más)
I am not sure how I came across this book, it seems to be on a few blogs at the moment, probably sponsored by Virago who have released it recently. My copy was from the stacks below the library where they store all the books not on the shelves and was published in 1975. It would seem that Whipple has had waves of popularity since this was first written in 1939, a time of great change with the country on the verge of war.
There are lots of books where there is a group of people with established dynamics and then someone else joins and completely changes everything, and so it is in this book. The Marwood family consists of Major Marwood, a complete idiot, who does not have the money to live the life of luxury he is used to, with his sister the artist and two daughters, Penelope and Christine who confine themselves when not outside in the grounds to the top floor where the three nursery rooms are situated and which they have never moved out of. The Major decides that he can not bear to live in the house with its shoddy housekeeping any longer, no one is there to ensure his fire is lit when he gets home, and so he marries again, his first wife having died many years previously.
And so, in comes Anthea, rather diffident to start off with who unsettles everything especially once she becomes pregnant with the whole book being a treatise to change and marriage with elements of the differences for those that are rich or poor and on growing up.
It was a pity that it was only marriage that moved women about, Anthea reflected. Women moved to men, but otherwise they mostly stayed where they were born.
p241
True for the rich before the war but not so much for everyone else, particularly during the war I imagine where women had to fill the roles left by men.
Whipple's view of men was that they
. . . gave trouble all their lives to women and they start early.
p256
This was shown in the book by Thompson, the groundsman and cricketer, chasing after younger women, by the Major being impossible to live with and by Nicholas, Christine's husband, sleeping with an old female friend. There was even Anthea's baby boy who the nurse deemed to not be as strong as his twin sister and so needed extra looking after. So, what are we saying? Is it women who make men like this?
Marriage does not appear to be a welcome institution on the surface for each of the married couples we encounter.
It was what the french call a 'deception' to Nicholas to find that after marriage, his life was much the same as before, and to Christine to find that hers was so different.
p263
But in the end, they all seem to sort themselves out and return to their marriages apart from the Major and Anthea who go on living their separate lives.
The book is long but feels a little like a soap opera with event after event happening so that you don't notice that you have worked your way through 528 pages. With the marriage of the Major to Anthea, I hoped that it would mean she came in and sorted everything out, brought the family together and found a way to make money as well. Superwoman! What Whipple does do is move us from this expectation to one that is less familiar and must have been extraordinary when it was first written, quite gently, so that you find yourself with Antha and the nurse living up in the nursery, Christine separated from her husband and living with her sister who is also trying to take Christine's daughter away from her and adopt her. Christine ends up in a beauty salon, Nicholas as a fruit drinks seller with his parents worrying about him sat at home and the Major wombling on in his own way.
I did think the ending was a little trite and unfortunately not what happened in real life but this was a wonderful book about the changing, shifting shapes of families.… (más)
There are lots of books where there is a group of people with established dynamics and then someone else joins and completely changes everything, and so it is in this book. The Marwood family consists of Major Marwood, a complete idiot, who does not have the money to live the life of luxury he is used to, with his sister the artist and two daughters, Penelope and Christine who confine themselves when not outside in the grounds to the top floor where the three nursery rooms are situated and which they have never moved out of. The Major decides that he can not bear to live in the house with its shoddy housekeeping any longer, no one is there to ensure his fire is lit when he gets home, and so he marries again, his first wife having died many years previously.
And so, in comes Anthea, rather diffident to start off with who unsettles everything especially once she becomes pregnant with the whole book being a treatise to change and marriage with elements of the differences for those that are rich or poor and on growing up.
It was a pity that it was only marriage that moved women about, Anthea reflected. Women moved to men, but otherwise they mostly stayed where they were born.
p241
True for the rich before the war but not so much for everyone else, particularly during the war I imagine where women had to fill the roles left by men.
Whipple's view of men was that they
. . . gave trouble all their lives to women and they start early.
p256
This was shown in the book by Thompson, the groundsman and cricketer, chasing after younger women, by the Major being impossible to live with and by Nicholas, Christine's husband, sleeping with an old female friend. There was even Anthea's baby boy who the nurse deemed to not be as strong as his twin sister and so needed extra looking after. So, what are we saying? Is it women who make men like this?
Marriage does not appear to be a welcome institution on the surface for each of the married couples we encounter.
It was what the french call a 'deception' to Nicholas to find that after marriage, his life was much the same as before, and to Christine to find that hers was so different.
p263
But in the end, they all seem to sort themselves out and return to their marriages apart from the Major and Anthea who go on living their separate lives.
The book is long but feels a little like a soap opera with event after event happening so that you don't notice that you have worked your way through 528 pages. With the marriage of the Major to Anthea, I hoped that it would mean she came in and sorted everything out, brought the family together and found a way to make money as well. Superwoman! What Whipple does do is move us from this expectation to one that is less familiar and must have been extraordinary when it was first written, quite gently, so that you find yourself with Antha and the nurse living up in the nursery, Christine separated from her husband and living with her sister who is also trying to take Christine's daughter away from her and adopt her. Christine ends up in a beauty salon, Nicholas as a fruit drinks seller with his parents worrying about him sat at home and the Major wombling on in his own way.
I did think the ending was a little trite and unfortunately not what happened in real life but this was a wonderful book about the changing, shifting shapes of families.… (más)
At the beginning of this book, Jane finds herself in her late teens, working in a small time draper’s shop. Her father has died before the book starts, leaving Jane living with her step mother and stepsiblings, and Jane is now self aware enough to know that she needs to leave as soon as she can.
She gets a new job working in a larger drapers than before, and through her youth and determination brings change and more business to her stuffy old boss. Finally she sets up shop for herself with the financial backing of one of her clients. Again through hard work and determination she makes a success of things which proves to be useful to those closest to her in the end.
This seems a fairly straight forward story, but as usual the devil is in the detail. Jane has to face the opposition of men – who cant believe that a woman could be better at business than a man – as well as women – who dont want to be seen mixing with people in “trade”. The War also makes an appearance (with the book being written in 1930, this can only really be WWI), changing the lives of many people, including Jane’s friend Wilfred, who has always been in love with her and who goes to war when he realises she doesnt love him. Jane also has a brief affair with a married man, and in the end has to make a decision that will affect everyone around her.
Meanwhile, despite the prevailing attitude that men are better than women in business, it’s the “lord of the manor” who becomes embroiled in a financial crises which reduces his partner to a bankrupt - meanwhile Jane and Mrs Briggs, having set up as a limited company, are not only making a success of the business but Jane will not be putting Mrs Briggs into the same situation as her husband finds herself in. Meanwhile Wilfred remains in the background and it is now that he shows his use to Jane.......… (más)
She gets a new job working in a larger drapers than before, and through her youth and determination brings change and more business to her stuffy old boss. Finally she sets up shop for herself with the financial backing of one of her clients. Again through hard work and determination she makes a success of things which proves to be useful to those closest to her in the end.
This seems a fairly straight forward story, but as usual the devil is in the detail. Jane has to face the opposition of men – who cant believe that a woman could be better at business than a man – as well as women – who dont want to be seen mixing with people in “trade”. The War also makes an appearance (with the book being written in 1930, this can only really be WWI), changing the lives of many people, including Jane’s friend Wilfred, who has always been in love with her and who goes to war when he realises she doesnt love him. Jane also has a brief affair with a married man, and in the end has to make a decision that will affect everyone around her.
Meanwhile, despite the prevailing attitude that men are better than women in business, it’s the “lord of the manor” who becomes embroiled in a financial crises which reduces his partner to a bankrupt - meanwhile Jane and Mrs Briggs, having set up as a limited company, are not only making a success of the business but Jane will not be putting Mrs Briggs into the same situation as her husband finds herself in. Meanwhile Wilfred remains in the background and it is now that he shows his use to Jane.......… (más)
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I didn't quite see where this was going until the very end. Whipple uses the "only connect" idea that we find in Forster's Howards End, how everything can be affected by decisions made by one person. I don't blame Avery as much as I blame Louise, a dreadful, dreadful character, who is painted so vividly. We might all know a Louise in our life, which is the scariest bit of this book. I was moved by the ending, and I think that this is the only one that Ellen could have gotten; it is the best ending for the situation that was forced on her.… (más)