Margaret Kennedy, British writer Recipient James Tail Black Memorial award for novel Troy Chimneys, Edinburgh University, 1954. Member.
Background
Margaret Kennedy was born in Hyde Park Gate, London, the eldest of the four children of Charles Moore Kennedy (1857-1934), a barrister, and his wife Ellinor Edith Marwood (1861–1928). The novelist Joyce Cary was a cousin on her father"s side.
Education
She attended Cheltenham Ladies" College, where she began writing, and then went up to Somerville College, Oxford in 1915 to read history.
Career
Other literary contemporaries at Somerville College included Winifred Holtby, Vera Brittain, Hilda Reid, Naomi Mitchison and Sylvia Thompson. Her first publication was a history book, A Century of Revolution (1922). Margaret Kennedy was married on 20 June 1925 to the barrister David Davies (1889–1964), who later became a county court judge and a national insurance commissioner.
He was knighted in 1952.
Margaret Kennedy is best appreciated today for her second novel, The Constant Nymph, which she adapted into a highly successful West End play that opened at the New Theatre, with Noël Coward and Edna Best in September 1926. Coward was replaced by John Gielgud during the run.
lieutenant was also successfully filmed in 1928 by Adrian Brunel and Alma Reville, directed by Brunel and Basil Dean, and starring Ivor Novello, Mabel Poulton and Benita Hume, and again in 1933, 1938 (for television), and 1943. Kennedy"s first novel had been The Ladies of Lyndon (1923).
Among her later successes were The Fool of the Family (1930), a sequel to The Constant Nymph, and the psychological novel A Long Time Ago (1932).
The darkly humorous The Heroes of Clone (1957) drew on Kennedy"s experience as a screenplay writer She also published a biography of Jane Austen and a study of the art of fiction, Outlaws on Parnassus. Kennedy followed up the stage success of The Constant Nymph (adapted in conjunction with Basil Dean) with three more co-written plays.
The most successful of these was Escape Maine Never (1934), an adaptation of The Fool of the Family, which was also filmed twice.
Of her postwar novels, The Feast (1950) introduces the disaster first and the characters who may or may not have perished in it afterwards, as in Thornton Wilder"s The Bridge of San Luis Rey. The seaside hotel annihilated by the collapse of the cliff is replete with dysfunctional characters of all ages and sizes, which provides a fine balance of suspense, sympathy and even humour.
Still, it works on other levels too. Her novelist granddaughter Serena Mackesy has called it "one of the cleverest bits of metaphor-working ever." lieutenant was recently reprinted, as were Lucy Carmichael (1951) and The Midas Touch.
Achievements
Membership
Member.
Connections
Married David Davies, June 20, 1925 (deceased). Children: Julia (wife Doctor.