Biography of Enid Bagnold (1889 - 1991)
Enid Bagnold
(1889 - 1991)
English novelist and playwright
She was born in Rochester, Kent, on 27 October, 1889 the daughter of an officer in the Royal Engineers Regiment and elder sister to Ralph Bagnold (leading authority on mechanics of sedimentary transport and also eolian (wind effect) processes and founder of the Long Rang Desert Group, which evolved into the Special Air Service (SAS)).
Her early childhood was spent on the West Indian island of Jamaica and she was educated in England and Switzerland. In 1908 Bagnold began attending Walter Sicket's School of Art. She developed a talent for etching and while in London became friends with Henri Gaudier-Brzeska, Katherine Mansfield and John Middleton Murry.
On
the outbreak of the First World War Bagnold joined the Voluntary Aid Detachments
(VADs) and worked as a nurse at the Royal Herbert Hospital, Woolwich.
Her account of this experience, Diary Without Dates (1917) was so critical
of hospital administration that the military authorities arranged for
her dismissal. Determined to help the war effort, Bagnold went to France
and worked as a volunteer driver. Later she wrote about this in The Happy
Foreigner (1920).
After the war she worked as a journalist and had an affair with for Frank Harris but in 1920 she married Sir Roderick Jones (Chairman of Reuters News Agency). She continued to use her maiden name for her writing. Surprisingly, she was never given a Damehood for her contributions.
Works: · A Diary Without Dates (1917), · The Sailing Ships and other poems (1918), · The Happy Foreigner (1920), · The highly acclaimed novel Serena Blandish or the Difficulty of Getting Married (1924), as A Lady of Quality · Alice & Thomas & Jane (1930), · National Velvet (1935), · The Squire (1937), The Door of Life (1938), · The Squire (1938), · Lottie Dundass (1943) play, · Two Plays (1944), · The Loved and Envied (1951), · Theatre (1951), · The Girl's Journey (1954) · The Chalk Garden (1956), play (probably her most famous play - inspired by her own garden at North End House Rottingdean),· The Chinese Prime Minister (1964), play · Autobiography (1969), · Four Plays (1970), · Matter of Gravity (1975) play, · Poems (1978), · Letters to Frank Harris & Other Friends (1980), · Early Poems (1987).
Bagnold's works combined wit, charm, sophistication, and wisdom. Her best-known novel was National Velvet (1935), the story of a teenage girl who wins a horse in a raffle and rides it to victory in the famed Grand National race which was filmed in 1944 with Elizabeth Taylor.
Enid Bagnold, Lady Jones died at Rottingdean, East Sussex on 31 March, 1981 at the age of 91.