Ivy: The Life Of I. Compton-Burnett
Condition: SECONDHAND
This is a secondhand book. The jacket image is a photograph of the exact copy we have in stock. This image shows the condition of this book. Further condition remarks are below.
Edition: 1st us ed.,
Condition remarks:
Book: Very good
Jacket: Very good
Pages: Good
Markings: Remainder mark
Behind the austere, imperious gaze that defined one of Britain's most singular literary minds lies a life as dramatic and unsettling as the novels she wrote — Hilary Spurling's Ivy: The Life of I. Compton-Burnett is the definitive biography of a writer who transformed domestic tyranny into high art. Spurling chronicles the long and extraordinary life of Ivy Compton-Burnett, from her claustrophobic Edwardian upbringing — scarred by the death of siblings and the suffocating dominance of a formidable stepmother — through to her emergence as one of the twentieth century's most idiosyncratic and celebrated novelists. Set against the backdrop of a rapidly changing Britain, the biography details how Ivy's darkly comic, dialogue-driven fiction became a unique mirror of repression, power, and survival, earning her a devoted following among literary cognoscenti. Spurling, herself a Whitbread Award-winning biographer, brings meticulous scholarship and remarkable empathy to her subject, illuminating how personal trauma was alchemised into a body of work that remains bracingly original. The biography argues persuasively that Compton-Burnett's clipped, theatrical prose — stripped of conventional narrative description and rich with menace — was not mere stylistic affectation, but a direct response to a life lived under the shadow of secrets and loss. For readers already acquainted with novels such as Manservant and Maidservant or A House and Its Head, this biography reframes everything; for those yet to discover her, it presents an irresistible invitation into a world of quietly devastating brilliance.
Author: Hilary Spurling
Format: Hardback
Published: 1984, Alfred A. Knopf
Genre: Biography
Edition: 1st us ed.,
Condition remarks:
Book: Very good
Jacket: Very good
Pages: Good
Markings: Remainder mark
Behind the austere, imperious gaze that defined one of Britain's most singular literary minds lies a life as dramatic and unsettling as the novels she wrote — Hilary Spurling's Ivy: The Life of I. Compton-Burnett is the definitive biography of a writer who transformed domestic tyranny into high art. Spurling chronicles the long and extraordinary life of Ivy Compton-Burnett, from her claustrophobic Edwardian upbringing — scarred by the death of siblings and the suffocating dominance of a formidable stepmother — through to her emergence as one of the twentieth century's most idiosyncratic and celebrated novelists. Set against the backdrop of a rapidly changing Britain, the biography details how Ivy's darkly comic, dialogue-driven fiction became a unique mirror of repression, power, and survival, earning her a devoted following among literary cognoscenti. Spurling, herself a Whitbread Award-winning biographer, brings meticulous scholarship and remarkable empathy to her subject, illuminating how personal trauma was alchemised into a body of work that remains bracingly original. The biography argues persuasively that Compton-Burnett's clipped, theatrical prose — stripped of conventional narrative description and rich with menace — was not mere stylistic affectation, but a direct response to a life lived under the shadow of secrets and loss. For readers already acquainted with novels such as Manservant and Maidservant or A House and Its Head, this biography reframes everything; for those yet to discover her, it presents an irresistible invitation into a world of quietly devastating brilliance.