(Novel about David Carlisle, who witnesses a man being rou...)
Novel about David Carlisle, who witnesses a man being roughed up on the subway and becomes obsessed with helping him, only to find himself held captive in a remote Irish cottage by the man he had tried to save.
(Novel about an old man who collects dust. He is wrongly a...)
Novel about an old man who collects dust. He is wrongly accused of child molestation, is passed between priests, jails, and mental institutions, and eventually gains a kind of local celebrity.
(Novel about a family whose finances collapse while the wi...)
Novel about a family whose finances collapse while the wife, who longs to paint, spends time in France. The family loses its house and makes a new life in Bristol.
(Novel set mainly in Ireland that follows Violet Farr, her...)
Novel set mainly in Ireland that follows Violet Farr, her loveless marriage, and the generations of her family bound by exile, homecoming, rejection, and love. It was published posthumously.
(Her only non-fiction book, a travel memoir written after ...)
Her only non-fiction book, a travel memoir written after she learned in 1986 that she had cancer. It recounts her solitary pilgrimage through France to Santiago de Compostela, with stops including Lourdes and Lisieux.
Jennifer Lash was an English novelist and painter known for The Burial, The Climate of Belief and Blood Ties. She published her first novel in 1961 at the age of 23, went on to write several more novels and a travel memoir, and died of cancer in 1993.
Background
Jennifer Anne Mary Alleyne Lash was born on 27 February 1938 in Chichester, Sussex, the daughter of Joan Mary (née Moore) and Brigadier Henry Alleyne Lash, a British colonial officer. Her father's postings took the family to India, where Lash lived until she was six. Her early childhood therefore unfolded in the final years of British rule in India, which ended with the country's independence in 1947. Her uncle, Bill Lash, served as Bishop of Bombay from 1947 to 1961.
When the family returned to England, they settled in Surrey. When Lash was sixteen, family problems cut short her studies. She left education, moved to London, and supported herself with odd jobs while pursuing her interest in art.
In the mid-1950s she met the lyric poet and gallery owner Iris Birtwistle in Churt, Surrey, where both were living. When Birtwistle moved to Walberswick, a coastal village in Suffolk, Lash went with her. Encouraged by Birtwistle, who renamed her Jini, Lash began work on her first novel, The Burial. Birtwistle also introduced her to the photographer Mark Fiennes, whom Lash married in 1962.
Education
Lash was raised a Roman Catholic and attended boarding school at the Convent of the Sacred Heart in Tunbridge Wells, Kent. The convent was run by nuns of the Society of the Sacred Heart, an order founded by Madeleine Sophie Barat in 1800 whose educational vision shaped Sacred Heart schools. The school is now called Beechwood Sacred Heart School. It was founded by the Society in 1915 and occupies a Victorian mansion built in 1855 in the style of Osborne House, Queen Victoria's residence on the Isle of Wight.
Lash continued her education at Farnham Art School. The school traced its origins to a public meeting in Farnham in 1871, although some sources date its founding to 1866. It was recognised as a government school of art in 1872, and its curriculum was associated with the Arts and Crafts movement, which promoted handicraft and design. In 1969 it merged with the Guildford School of Art to form the West Surrey College of Art and Design.
Her formal education ended when she was sixteen, when family problems interrupted her studies and she moved to London to pursue her artistic interests.
Lash's professional career centred on writing novels and painting. Her first novel, The Burial, was published in 1961, when she was 23. Her second novel was published in the United Kingdom in 1962 as The Climate of Belief. Its American edition appeared in 1963 under the title The Prism, published by Doubleday in Garden City, New York. A 1963 press photograph caption described the novel as exploring the many facets of man's relationship to God. Her later novels were Get Down There and Die (1977), The Dust Collector (1979), and From May to October (1980).
Her paintings were featured in several exhibitions in galleries in Cornwall and Suffolk. In the late 1980s she was diagnosed with breast cancer. While in remission, she travelled to Lourdes, a Marian shrine in southern France, to Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer in France, and to Santiago de Compostela in north-west Spain, the destination of the medieval pilgrimage route to the shrine of Saint James. During this period she wrote On Pilgrimage, her only non-fiction book.
Her final novel, Blood Ties, was published posthumously in 1997. Lash died on 28 December 1993 at Odstock, Wiltshire, aged 55.
Achievements
Her novels The Burial, The Climate of Belief, and Blood Ties are regarded as her best-known works. Blood Ties, her final novel, is widely regarded as her finest work.
Her debut novel, The Burial, was published in 1961, when she was 23. She was regarded in the period as one of the most promising young people among England's artists.
Her paintings were shown in several exhibitions in galleries in Cornwall and Suffolk, alongside her career as a novelist.
(Her only non-fiction book, a travel memoir written after ...)
1998
Religion
Lash was raised a Roman Catholic. Her mother, Joan Mary Moore, was of Irish Catholic descent, and Lash grew up within a Catholic family that later sent her to a Catholic convent boarding school run by the Society of the Sacred Heart.
The Roman Catholic Church is the largest Christian communion, centred on the sacraments, the authority of the pope, and devotion to saints and shrines. The Society of the Sacred Heart was founded in 1800 by Madeleine Sophie Barat, and its schools were organised around Catholic education and personal spiritual formation. Pilgrimage to Marian shrines such as Lourdes and to the shrine of Saint James at Santiago de Compostela was part of the devotional life that Lash later described in her memoir On Pilgrimage.
Views
Lash's novels engage with spiritual and moral questions. The Prism, the American title of her second novel, was described in 1963 as addressing humanity's relationship to God. Her novel Blood Ties is presented by its publisher as a work about the redemptive power of love, and her memoir On Pilgrimage reflects her engagement with Christian pilgrimage sites.
Personality
Quotes from others about the person
Dodie Smith, who wrote The Hundred and One Dalmatians, remarked on meeting Lash in Suffolk that she was "almost too interesting to be true."
Connections
Lash married the photographer Mark Fiennes in 1962, a year in which her second book was published. Together they raised six children and also fostered Michael Emery, an archaeologist, so the household included seven children in all. Their children were the actors Ralph and Joseph Fiennes, the filmmakers Martha and Sophie Fiennes, the composer Magnus Fiennes, and the conservationist Jacob Fiennes. The family lived in several places, including Suffolk, Wiltshire, Ireland, and London. Lash's uncle, Bill Lash, was Bishop of Bombay.
Uncle:
Bill Lash
Served as Bishop of Bombay from 1947 to 1961.
husband:
Mark Fiennes
Photographer who married Lash in 1962.
Son:
Ralph Fiennes
Actor, born in Ipswich in 1962.
Son:
Joseph Fiennes
Actor.
Daughter:
Martha Fiennes
Film director.
Daughter:
Sophie Fiennes
Documentary filmmaker.
Son:
Magnus Fiennes
Composer.
Son:
Jacob Fiennes
Conservationist.
Son:
Michael Emery
Foster son; archaeologist.
References
Contemporary Authors
Biographical reference series that includes an entry on Lash's life and writing.
