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Cargando... Sybille Bedford: A Lifepor Selina Hastings
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"From the celebrated biographer of Nancy Mitford, and Evelyn Waugh: a full and fascinating biography--the very first--of the long-admired and universally-acclaimed English writer. When Sybille Bedford died in 2006 at the age of 94, she had written ten books, including four novels and a biography of Aldous Huxley. Her novels--the last of which was shortlisted for the Booker--all fictionalized her extraordinarily colorful, peripatetic life and dramatic family history. Born just outside Berlin, she lived alternately in Baden, the south of France, New York, Los Angeles, Paris, Rome and London. As an adolescent she was mentored by Aldous Huxley . . . Martha Gellhorn convinced her to write her first novel, A Legacy, which would finally be published in 1956 . . . in the 1960s she wrote for magazines and newspapers, covering nearly 100 trials including that of Auschwitz officials, and Jack Ruby's for the murder of Lee Harvey Oswald . . . she was an important figure in the lesbian community in Europe and America . . . and though she often found herself in dire financial straits, her life was just as often underwritten by devoted men or her women lovers. She was possessed of a fierce intelligence, wit, curiosity, compassion, and unstinting engagement with all the vagaries and variety of life. And Selina Hastings has brilliantly captured the woman and the writer in all the richness of her character and achievements"-- No se han encontrado descripciones de biblioteca. |
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 Google Books — Cargando...GénerosSistema Decimal Melvil (DDC)823.914Literature English English fiction Modern Period 1901-1999 1945-1999Clasificación de la Biblioteca del CongresoValoraciónPromedio: (4)
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She grew up in Baden, Germany, with a distant aristocratic father and narcissistic, flighty mother. After her parents divorced, she accompanied her mother and her mother's lover to the south of France. She was sent to England to be educated but returned to France where she was lucky to find a community of interesting intellectuals. That's how she met Aldous Huxley and his wife Maria, among others, who became close friends (Maria was a lover, too). “Bedford” was from a “one of our bugger friends” the Huxleys found, who married her for £100 so she could get an English passport and escape WWII France.
She always knew she was a writer and was encouraged by Huxley but took a while to find her voice. After several attempts she wrote A Legacy. A good review from Evelyn Waugh helped sales. She went on to write more novels and memoirs and died at 95.
She moved around France, Italy, London, New York, and Los Angeles and spent time with interesting people wherever she went: Huxley and his second wife, Martha Gellhorn, Elizabeth Jane Howard, Thomas Mann and his children, and other writers. Elizabeth David, Paul and Julia Child and others in the wine and food world. I had not know she was a lesbian who had many lovers. She and her friends, straight, bi, and gay, were constantly having affairs, breaking up, finding new loves, having more affairs, and mostly staying friends. I wish I had a more exciting life!
The book is filled with details of all her moves and travels and who she was with, but not much about her interior life. How did she approach writing? What helped her grow as a writer? How did she feel about the many women who come and go? It's clear she had many lifelong friends, and interesting that women kept falling in love with her and wanting to care for her, to the end of her life. In many relationships she was the adored one and it was assumed that she would be left to write while the partner would take care of household things.
The NY Times review of this book described her as a "world-class freeloader" but I prefer to think of her as someone who was lucky to have many friends she loved, and who loved her. (