Background
Victor Sawdon Pritchett was born on December 16, 1900 in Ipswich, Suffolk, United Kingdom. He was the son of Walter Sawdon Pritchett and Beatrice Helena (née Martin). His father was a London businessman.
Dulwich College, where Pritchett received his education
Dulwich College, where Pritchett received his education
Pritchett was educated at Alleyn's School.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0394418263/?tag=2022091-20
(London of the mind, the heart and the eye is displayed, d...)
London of the mind, the heart and the eye is displayed, discussed and dissected in this classic work of 1962 that unites the elegant prose of V.S. Pritchett and the revealing photographs of Evelyn Hofer. Here is a pithy, knowledgeable distillation of the essential London - a panorama of its history, art, literature and daily life. Here is the city that Londoners know, a paraodox of grandeur and grime, the locus of bustling markets and tranquil parks, of palaces and pubs, of docks and railway depots, of the ancient and modern. Great Londoners of the past stalk these pages - Wren, Pepys, Defoe, Hogarth, Dickens and, of course, Samuel Johnson. And here, too, are the faces of the people inhabiting modern London - enigmatic and enduring.
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(In spring 1927 V.S Pritchett set out to walk 300 miles ac...)
In spring 1927 V.S Pritchett set out to walk 300 miles across Spain. The country was almost completely isolated, and Pritchett describes a timeless country on the cusp of being riven by civil war, populated by a wonderful selection of characters.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B008TPQLUQ/?tag=2022091-20
Victor Sawdon Pritchett was born on December 16, 1900 in Ipswich, Suffolk, United Kingdom. He was the son of Walter Sawdon Pritchett and Beatrice Helena (née Martin). His father was a London businessman.
Pritchett attended St John's School. Subsequently, he was educated at Alleyn's School, and Dulwich College.
Pritchett's short stories—published throughout the nearly six decades of his literary career—have won praise for a style that relies on economy of language while revealing astute powers of observation and comic discernment.
As a literary critic Pritchett wrote in the conversational tone of the familiar essay, approaching literature from the viewpoint of a lettered but not overly scholarly reader. Largely self-educated, Pritchett left school at the age of fifteen and worked in the leather trade before traveling to France, Ireland, Spain, Morocco, and the United States.
He began a journalistic career as a freelance contributor to the Christian Science Monitor and other publications, and his travels abroad provided material for his first books, including 1928’s nonfiction work Marching Spain and the 1930 short story collection The Spanish Virgin, and Other Stories. Returning to England, Pritchett began contributing to the New Statesman in 1926 and was the author of the weekly review column “Books in General” for many years. He advanced to the position of director of New Statesman in 1951. In addition to collections of his literary essays, Pritchett’s books include critical biographies of the Russian writers Anton Chekhov and Ivan Turgenev and the French novelist Honoré de Balzac.
During the Second World War Pritchett worked for the BBC and the Ministry of Information. After World War II he wrote expansively and took various university teaching positions in the United States: Princeton (1953), the University of California (1962), Columbia University and Smith College.
Pritchett worked as the President of PEN International from 1974 until 1976.
Pritchett remained active as a writer well into his eighties. He edited the Oxford Book of Short Stories in 1981 and published his highly-regarded biography of Chekhov in 1988.
His last published works include the collections The Complete Short Stories (1990), Lasting Impressions (1990), and The Complete Essays (1991).
In addition to his literary career, Pritchett served as the Commander of the British Empire in 1968.
Pritchett won both the Royal Society of Literature Award and the Heinemann Award for A Cab at the Door: A Memoir (1968), an account of his unorthodox upbringing, which included numerous moves as a result of his father’s failed businesses.
He won Order of the British Empire in 1968, as well as the PEN Award six years later. Also Pritchett was awarded with the W.H. Smith Literary Award in 1990 and the Golden PEN Award 4 years later.
Pritchett was knighted for his services to literature in 1975 and won designation as a Companion of Honor in 1993.
The V.S. Pritchett Memorial Prize was founded by the Royal Society of Literature.
(London of the mind, the heart and the eye is displayed, d...)
(In spring 1927 V.S Pritchett set out to walk 300 miles ac...)
Pritchett married Evelyn Vigors, but their marriage was not happy. In 1936 he divorced Vigors and married Dorothy Rudge Roberts, by whom he had two children.
