Background
Born in 1884, the eldest child of Dr. James Compton Burnett, a distinguished homeopathic practitioner, and his second wife, Katherine (his first wife had died in childbirth leaving 5 children under 8). Ivy had 6 younger siblings, including brothers Guy and Noel to whom she was especially close. Educated at home with her brothers, they had a secure if isolated childhood. Then in 1901, when Ivy was 16, her father died and everything changed. His distraught widow plunged the whole family including the baby into black for well over a year, and became increasingly neurotic and despotic.
Four years later Guy, Ivy's true soulmate, died of pneumonia. Her mother died in 1911, and in 1916 Noel, to whom Ivy had turned after Guy's death, was killed on the Somme. On Christmas Day 1917 Ivy's two youngest sisters committed joint suicide in their bedroom; the following year Ivy was desperately ill with pneumonia.
So by her early 30's Ivy had lost all those closest to her. She drew a line under her past and started a new life in London, (sharing a flat for the next 32 years with Margaret Jourdain, the well-known journalist and writer on furniture and interiors) never again spoke of the events of her first 33 years and never married.
In her novels family tensions, including violent crimes, are worked out in the home with no intervention by police or other agents of society. Dame Ivy's most distinctive contribution to the history of the novel may be her complete break with the conventions of poetic justice, since even infanticide occurs without overt punishment. Indeed, in a Compton-Burnett novel the wicked flourish; it is the virtuous who suffer. In More Women than Men (1933), for example, Josephine, a dominating schoolmistress, murders the wife of her adopted son, whom she jealously loves, and goes unpunished. She then becomes a nicer, better person than she was before her crime, because she is happy.
Nearly all Dame Ivy's effects are gained through dialogue, which, as in the following example from A Father and His Fate (1957), is spare, concise, and, frequently, abstract:
“Well,#Well, we will not become argumentative.”argumentative.#
“People#People never say that until they have done so.”so.#
“A#A little healthy discussion need not be given that name.”name.#
“It#It tends to deserve it. And why should it be healthy?”healthy?#
She also makes use of traditional theatrical devices, such as asides, eavesdroppings, and all the rich possibilities of entrances and exists.
Miss Compton-Burnett's early works, including Men and Wives (1931) and A House and Its Head (1935), concern murder within the family. The next six novels, excepting A Family and a Fortune (1939), introduce voluble children whose dialogue does not in any way differ from that of their elders: Daughters and Sons (1937), Parents and Children (1941), Elders and Betters (1944), Manservant and Maid-servant (1947), and Two Worlds and Their Ways (1949).
Her last phase includes Darkness and Day (1951), The Present and the Past (1953), Mother and Son (1955), A Heritage and Its History (1959), The Mighty and Their Fall (1961), and the posthumously published The Last and the First (1971), which display most of the earlier characteristics although with slight variations of emphasis.