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About Naomi Mitchison
From Amazon:
Naomi Mitchison, author of over 70 books, died in 1999 at the age of 101. She was born in and lived in Scotland but traveled widely throughout the world. In the 1960s she was adopted as adviser and mother of the Bakgatla tribe in Botswana. Her books include historical fiction, science fiction, poetry, autobiography, and nonfiction, the most popular of which are The Corn King and the Spring Queen, The Conquered, and Memoirs of a Spacewoman.
From Wikipedia (extracts):
Naomi Mary Margaret Mitchison, Baroness Mitchison (née Haldane; 1 November 1897 – 11 January 1999), was a Scottish novelist and poet. Often called a doyenne of Scottish literature, she wrote more than 90 books of historical and science fiction, travel writing and autobiography. Her husband Dick Mitchison's life peerage in 1964 entitled her to call herself Lady Mitchison, but she never did. Her 1931 work, The Corn King and the Spring Queen, is seen by some as the prime 20th-century historical novel.
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Literary critic Geoffrey Sadler stated of Mitchison's historical fiction: "On the basis of her early writings, she is unquestionably one of the great historical novelists."
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Undoubtedly her most controversial work, We Have Been Warned, was published in 1935, based on a journey to the Soviet Union. In it she explored sexual behaviour, including rape and abortion. The book was rejected by various publishers and ultimately censored.
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After her husband's death, Mitchison wrote several memoirs, published as separate titles between 1973 and 1985. She was also a good friend of the writer J. R. R. Tolkien, and one of the proof readers of The Lord of the Rings.
Comments
Such an interesting person. It always amazes me how I have never heard of some of these people.
Yes, I was kind of shocked at myself when the bookseller in the village recommended this book to me and like you, I had never heard of her... but felt that I absolutely should have done