Anna Kavan (born Helen Emily Woods; 10 April 1901 – 5 December 1968) was a British novelist, short story writer and painter. Originally publishing under her first married name, Helen Ferguson, she adopted the name Anna Kavan in 1939, not only as a pen name but as her legal identity.

Biography

Early life

Anna Kavan was born Helen Emily Woods in

Cannes Cannes ( , , ; oc, Canas) is a city located on the French Riviera. It is a commune located in the Alpes-Maritimes department, and host city of the annual Cannes Film Festival, Midem, and Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity. T ...

, South of France, the

only child An only child is a person with no siblings, by birth or adoption. Children who have half-siblings, step-siblings, or have never met their siblings, either living at the same house or at a different house—especially those who were born consider ...

of a wealthy British family. Her parents travelled frequently and Kavan grew up in Europe and the United States. As an adult she remembered her childhood as lonely and neglected. Her father died by suicide in 1911. After his death, Kavan returned to the UK where she was a boarder at

Parsons Mead School Parsons Mead School was a private girls school founded by Jessie Elliston in Ashtead, Surrey, England, which existed from 1897 to 2006. Founder Jessie Elliston (1858–1942) was born in Bridgnorth, Shropshire. The family moved to Leighton Buzza ...

in Ashstead and Malvern College in Worcestershire. Disregarding her daughter's desire to go to

Oxford Oxford () is a city in England. It is the county town and only city of Oxfordshire. In 2020, its population was estimated at 151,584. It is north-west of London, south-east of Birmingham and north-east of Bristol. The city is home to the ...

, her mother arranged an encounter with Donald Ferguson, her mother's former lover. Helen Emily Woods married him in 1920, a few months before he took a position with the Railway Company in

Burma Myanmar, ; UK pronunciations: US pronunciations incl. . Note: Wikipedia's IPA conventions require indicating /r/ even in British English although only some British English speakers pronounce r at the end of syllables. As John Wells explai ...

. She moved with her husband, began to write and gave birth to her son Bryan. In 1923, Kavan left Ferguson and returned with her son to the UK. These biographical events match the underlying narrative of her initial

Bildungsroman In literary criticism, a ''Bildungsroman'' (, plural ''Bildungsromane'', ) is a literary genre that focuses on the psychological and moral growth of the protagonist from childhood to adulthood (coming of age), in which character change is import ...

''Let Me Alone'' (1930) while ''Who Are You?'' (1963), written in a Nouveau Roman style, is an

experimental An experiment is a procedure carried out to support or refute a hypothesis, or determine the efficacy or likelihood of something previously untried. Experiments provide insight into cause-and-effect by demonstrating what outcome occurs when a ...

variation of her time in Burma. Living alone in London during the mid-1920s, she began studying painting at the London Central School of Arts and Crafts, and continued to paint throughout her life. Kavan regularly travelled to the French Riviera where she was introduced to heroin by racing car drivers she took up with.Ironside Virginia, "Julia and the Bazooka" Peter Owen Publishers reprint 2007, introduction. In 1928 she divorced Ferguson and married an artist named Stuart Edmonds whom she had met near

Toulon Toulon (, , ; oc, label= Provençal, Tolon , , ) is a city on the French Riviera and a large port on the Mediterranean coast, with a major naval base. Located in the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur region, and the Provence province, Toulon is th ...

. They travelled together through France, Italy, Spain and the Pyrenees before resettling in England. A year later, she published her first novel, ''A Charmed Circle'', under the name Helen Ferguson, followed by five more books over the next eight years. BELLEVUE-FENSTER-1

Kavan and Edmonds had a daughter, Margaret, who died soon after childbirth and they then adopted a child whom they named Susanna. In 1938, when her second marriage ended, she attempted suicide and was admitted to a clinic in Switzerland. These were the first of what would be multiple hospitalizations and

asylum Asylum may refer to: Types of asylum * Asylum (antiquity), places of refuge in ancient Greece and Rome * Benevolent Asylum, a 19th-century Australian institution for housing the destitute * Cities of Refuge, places of refuge in ancient Judea ...

incarcerations throughout Kavan's life for both depression and her lifelong

heroin addiction Opioid use disorder (OUD) is a substance use disorder characterized by cravings for opioids, continued use despite physical and/or psychological deterioration, increased tolerance with use, and withdrawal symptoms after discontinuing opioids. Op ...

As Anna Kavan

''Asylum Piece'' (1940), a collection of short stories which explored the inner mindscape of the psychological explorer, was her first book under the name Anna Kavan,

hero A hero (feminine: heroine) is a real person or a main fictional character who, in the face of danger, combats adversity through feats of ingenuity, courage, or strength. Like other formerly gender-specific terms (like ''actor''), ''her ...

ine of her previous novels ''Let Me Alone'' (1930) and ''A Stranger Still'' (1935). All subsequent works would feature a radically altered writing style. From that moment, the brunette Ferguson disappeared and the crystal-blond Kavan set about a career as an avant-garde writer using her legal name in the United States. An inveterate traveller, Kavan initiated a long journey at the outset of

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing ...

. From September 1939 to February 1943, she spent six months in Carmel-by-the-Sea, California in 1940 ; it inspired her novella My Soul in China, published posthumously in 1975. She also visited the island of Bali, Indonesia, and stayed for twenty-two months in Napier, New Zealand, her final destination. Her travel itinerary was complicated by the war, which severely restricted many ordinary boat routes. As a consequence, her path took her through

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the Un ...

three times and the Suez Canal twice. Returning to England early 1943, she worked briefly with soldiers suffering from war neurosis at the Mill Hill Emergency Hospital and studied for a diploma in Psychological Medicine. She also took a secretarial position at Horizon, an influential literary magazine edited by

Cyril Connolly Cyril Vernon Connolly CBE (10 September 1903 – 26 November 1974) was an English literary critic and writer. He was the editor of the influential literary magazine '' Horizon'' (1940–49) and wrote '' Enemies of Promise'' (1938), which comb ...

and founded by Peter Watson, one of her friends. She contributed with stories, articles and reviews from 1944 to 1946. In February 1944, Kavan's son from her first marriage, Bryan Gratney Ferguson, died serving in

No. 3 Commando No. 3 Commando was a battalion-sized Commando unit raised by the British Army during the Second World War. Formed in July 1940 from volunteers for special service, it was the first such unit to carry the title of "Commando". Shortly afterwards the ...

during the Second World War. After her return to the UK, Kavan began treatment with the German psychiatrist . He became Kavan's close friend and sometime creative collaborator until his death in 1964. They co-wrote ''The Horse's Tale'' (1949) and Kavan dedicated several short stories to her doctor published in the posthumous collection ''Julia and the Bazooka'' (1970). It was Bluth who arranged for Kavan to be treated at , a modern clinic where important psychiatric advances were made (1857–1980). There, Kavan received treatment from

Ludwig Binswanger Ludwig Binswanger (; ; 13 April 1881 – 5 February 1966) was a Swiss psychiatrist and pioneer in the field of existential psychology. His parents were Robert Johann Binswanger (1850–1910) and Bertha Hasenclever (1847–1896). Robert's Ger ...

, a psychiatrist, pioneer in the field of

existential psychology Existential psychotherapy is a form of psychotherapy based on the model of human nature and experience developed by the existential tradition of European philosophy. It focuses on concepts that are universally applicable to human existence incl ...

and lifelong friend of Freud. Kavan continued to undergo sporadic inpatient treatments for heroin addiction and in her later years in London lived as a virtual recluse. She enjoyed a late triumph in 1967 with her novel ''

Ice Ice is water frozen into a solid state, typically forming at or below temperatures of 0 degrees Celsius or Depending on the presence of impurities such as particles of soil or bubbles of air, it can appear transparent or a more or less opaqu ...

'', inspired by her time in New Zealand and the country's proximity to the inhospitable frozen landscape of

Antarctica Antarctica () is Earth's southernmost and least-populated continent. Situated almost entirely south of the Antarctic Circle and surrounded by the Southern Ocean, it contains the geographic South Pole. Antarctica is the fifth-largest cont ...

. The original manuscript was titled The Cold World. When her publisher Peter Owen sent Kavan his initial response, neither rejecting nor accepting her text, he described it as a cross between

Kafka Franz Kafka (3 July 1883 – 3 June 1924) was a German-speaking Bohemian novelist and short-story writer, widely regarded as one of the major figures of 20th-century literature. His work fuses elements of realism and the fantastic. It typi ...

and The Avengers.David Callard, The Case of Anna Kavan, biography published by Peter Owen, 1992. This

post-apocalyptic Apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic fiction is a subgenre of speculative fiction in which the Earth's (or another planet's) civilization is collapsing or has collapsed. The apocalypse event may be climatic, such as runaway climate change; ast ...

novel brought critical acclaim. It is her best-known novel, still puzzling the reader for its strangeness and nowadays rather introduced as a

slipstream A slipstream is a region behind a moving object in which a wake of fluid (typically air or mustard) is moving at velocities comparable to that of the moving fluid, relative to the ambient fluid through which the object is churning. The term sli ...

novel than a

science fiction Science fiction (sometimes shortened to Sci-Fi or SF) is a genre of speculative fiction which typically deals with imaginative and futuristic concepts such as advanced science and technology, space exploration, time travel, parallel uni ...

one. The first six of her novels gave little indication of the experimental and disturbing nature of her later work published after her detox treatment. ''Asylum Piece'' definitely heralded the new style and content of Kavan's writing. Her development of "nocturnal language".Anaïs Nin, The Novel of the Future published by Mcmillan, 1968. involved the lexicon of dreams and addiction, mental instability and alienation. She has been compared to

Djuna Barnes Djuna Barnes (, June 12, 1892 – June 18, 1982) was an American artist, illustrator, journalist, and writer who is perhaps best known for her novel ''Nightwood'' (1936), a cult classic of lesbian fiction and an important work of modernist liter ...

Virginia Woolf Adeline Virginia Woolf (; ; 25 January 1882 28 March 1941) was an English writer, considered one of the most important modernist 20th-century authors and a pioneer in the use of stream of consciousness as a narrative device. Woolf was born i ...

, and

Sylvia Plath Sylvia Plath (; October 27, 1932 – February 11, 1963) was an American poet, novelist, and short story writer. She is credited with advancing the genre of confessional poetry and is best known for two of her published collections, '' Th ...

Brian Aldiss Brian Wilson Aldiss (; 18 August 1925 – 19 August 2017) was an English writer, artist, and anthology editor, best known for science fiction novels and short stories. His byline reads either Brian W. Aldiss or simply Brian Aldiss, except for o ...

described her as

's sister.Brian Aldiss, The Detached Retina : aspects of SF and Fantasy published Syracuse University Press, 1995. Anaïs Nin was an admirer and unsuccessfully pursued a correspondence with Kavan.

Death and legacy

Although popularly supposed to have died of heroin overdose, Kavan died of heart failure at her home in Kensington and was found dead on 5 December 1968. The previous night she had failed to attend a reception in honor of Anaïs Nin at the home of her London-based publisher Peter Owen.Emily Hill, A Novel Approach, interview with Peter Owen for Dazed & Confused, 2010 :"The author of Ice, who died in 1968 with enough heroin stockpiled in her house to kill the whole street, did so on the night she was expected at one of Peter Owen’s parties. When the police broke in the door, they found the gold invitation, so Owen was the first person they called. "I didn’t realise at the time that I was dealing with a really major writer who would become a cult figure", Owen admits. ". Many of her works were published posthumously, some edited by her friend and legatee, the Welsh writer Rhys Davies. London-based Peter Owen Publishers have been long-serving advocates of Kavan's work and continue to keep her work in print. Doris Lessing,

J. G. Ballard James Graham Ballard (15 November 193019 April 2009) was an English novelist, short story writer, satirist, and essayist known for provocative works of fiction which explored the relations between human psychology, technology, sex, and mass med ...

, Anaïs Nin,

Jean Rhys Jean Rhys, ( ; born Ella Gwendolyn Rees Williams; 24 August 1890 – 14 May 1979) was a British novelist who was born and grew up in the Caribbean island of Dominica. From the age of 16, she mainly resided in England, where she was sent for he ...

, Christopher Priest, Nina Allan,

Virginia Ironside Virginia Ironside (born 3 February 1944) is a British journalist, agony aunt and author. Born in London, she is the daughter of Christopher Ironside, painter and coin designer, and Janey Ironside who was the first professor of fashion design at t ...

and Maggie Gee are among the writers who have praised her work. In 2009The society was founded by Victoria Walker who achieved her PhD 'The Fiction of Anna Kavan' at Queen Mary, University of London in 2012. the Anna Kavan Society was founded in London with the aim of encouraging wider readership and increasing academic scholarship of Kavan's work. Kavan's paintings have been recently exhibited at the Zarrow Art Center in

Tulsa Tulsa () is the second-largest city in the state of Oklahoma and 47th-most populous city in the United States. The population was 413,066 as of the 2020 census. It is the principal municipality of the Tulsa Metropolitan Area, a region with ...

, Oklahoma. ''The Unconventional Anna Kavan: Works on Paper''Kristina Rosenthal, Announcement: Anna Kavan at the Zarrow Art Center 23 October 2014 :"Based upon her formal training at the Central London School of Arts and Crafts in "design theory", Kavan’s technique places each current painting in the context of earlier pieces. It mirrored her creative approach to first experience a relationship, emotion, or life situation then make a work of art that marked that experience. She considered these memorials a justification for having lived." . exhibition displayed thirty-six paintings created by Kavan drawn from the McFarlin Library Special Collections, University of Tulsa. The exhibition ''Mad, Bad and Sad: Women and the Mind Doctors'' at

Freud Museum The Freud Museum in London is a museum dedicated to Sigmund Freud, located in the house where Freud lived with his family during the last year of his life. In 1938, after escaping Nazi annexation of Austria he came to London via Paris and s ...

London10 October 2013 – 2 February 2014 : Inspired by Lisa Appignanesi’s acclaimed book, Mad, Bad and Sad: Women and the Mind Doctors from 1800 to the Present, the exhibition highlights the experience of women and their relationship to those who confined, cared for and listened to them. It also shows how women today conduct their own explorations of mind and imagination in challenging works of art. traced key moments in the history of hysteria and counterpointed these with women's inventive art.

Modern scholarship and interpretations

In September 2014, the Anna Kavan Society organized a one-day symposium at the Institute of English Studies in association with Liverpool John Moores University Research Centre for Literature and Cultural History and

Peter Owen Publishers Peter Owen Publishers is a family-run London-based independent publisher based in London, England. It was founded in 1951.John Self"Peter Owen: Sixty years of innovation" Books Blog, ''The Guardian'', 4 July 2011. History The company was founded ...

. Th
Anna Kavan Symposium
brought together scholars and writers to historicize Kavan's work (from the

post-colonial Postcolonialism is the critical academic study of the cultural, political and economic legacy of colonialism and imperialism, focusing on the impact of human control and exploitation of colonized people and their lands. More specifically, it is a ...

aspects of Kavan's fiction and journalism to the

interwar In the history of the 20th century, the interwar period lasted from 11 November 1918 to 1 September 1939 (20 years, 9 months, 21 days), the end of the First World War to the beginning of the Second World War. The interwar period was relativel ...

and

period), situate her within the literary and intellectual context of her times, and chart her legacy as a writer.

Feminist readings

On ''Ice'' and

protofeminism Protofeminism is a concept that anticipates modern feminism in eras when the feminist concept as such was still unknown. This refers particularly to times before the 20th century, although the precise usage is disputed, as 18th-century feminism ...

, L.Timmel Duchamp said "First published in 1967, on the eve of the second wave of feminism, ''Ice'' has never been regarded as a significant work of proto-feminist literature, although scholars occasionally include it on lists of sf by women written before the major works of feminist sf burst onto the scene in the 1970s. The novel's surrealist form demands a different sort of reading than that of science fiction driven by narrative causality, but the text's obsessive insistence on linking the global political violence of the Cold War with the threateningly lethal sexual objectification of Woman and depicting them as two poles of the same suicidal collective will to destroy life makes ''Ice'' an interesting feminist literary experiment."

Genre-bending and experimental writing

Kavan's reception as a 'woman writer' has been complicated by her perceived lack of attention to gender politics, and her fiction has most often been interpreted as autobiography rather than experimental and aesthetic writing. Kavan's work is difficult to situate in fixed literary categories; the scope of her work shows her experimenting with

realism Realism, Realistic, or Realists may refer to: In the arts *Realism (arts), the general attempt to depict subjects truthfully in different forms of the arts Arts movements related to realism include: *Classical Realism *Literary realism, a move ...

, surrealism and absurdism. Her work often abandons linear plot and narrative structure and portrays nameless landscapes and nameless characters. Her disruptive narratives are close to the technique of

stream of consciousness In literary criticism, stream of consciousness is a narrative mode or method that attempts "to depict the multitudinous thoughts and feelings which pass through the mind" of a narrator. The term was coined by Daniel Oliver in 1840 in ''First L ...

associated with modernist novelists. Her best-known novel ''Ice'' has been described as

, a non-realistic fiction that crosses conventional genre boundaries, where

Borges Jorge Francisco Isidoro Luis Borges Acevedo (; ; 24 August 1899 – 14 June 1986) was an Argentine short-story writer, essayist, poet and translator, as well as a key figure in Spanish-language and international literature. His best-known bo ...

' ''Fictions'',

Calvino Italo Calvino (, also , ;. RAI (circa 1970), retrieved 25 October 2012. 15 October 1923 – 19 September 1985) was an Italian writer and journalist. His best known works include the '' Our Ancestors'' trilogy (1952–1959), the ''Cosmicomi ...

's ''Invisible Cities'' or Ballard's ''Crash'' are cited as 'canon of slipstream writing'.A Working Canon of Slipstream Writing
compiled in

Readercon Readercon is an annual science fiction convention, held every July in the Boston, Massachusetts area, in Burlington, Massachusetts. It was founded by Bob Colby and Eric Van in 1987 with the goal of focusing almost exclusively on science fiction/ ...

18, 2007.

Politics of madness

Kavan's writing of madness, asylum incarceration and opiate addiction offer a complex and thought-provoking perspective on early twentieth-century

psychiatry Psychiatry is the specialty (medicine), medical specialty devoted to the diagnosis, prevention, and treatment of mental disorders. These include various maladaptations related to mood, behaviour, cognition, and perceptions. See glossary of psych ...

and psychotherapy. As well as being treated in private asylums and nursing homes, Kavan underwent a short analysis at the

Tavistock Clinic The Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust is a specialist mental health trust based in north London. The Trust specialises in talking therapies. The education and training department caters for 2,000 students a year from the United Ki ...

, experienced Ludwig Binswanger's method of

existential psychotherapy Existential psychotherapy is a form of psychotherapy based on the model of human nature and experience developed by the existential tradition of European philosophy. It focuses on concepts that are universally applicable to human existence inclu ...

at the Bellevue Sanatorium, and had a close personal relationship with her longtime psychiatrist Karl Bluth. In her fiction and journalism Kavan promoted a radical politics of madness, giving voice to the disenfranchised and marginalized psychiatric patient and presaging the

anti-psychiatry Anti-psychiatry is a movement based on the view that psychiatric treatment is often more damaging than helpful to patients, highlighting controversies about psychiatry. Objections include the reliability of psychiatric diagnosis, the questionabl ...

movement. In the exhibition ''Mad, Bad and Sad: Women and the Mind Doctors'' at the Freud Museum in London (2013), her work was presented alongside other female explorers of the mind, among them:

Mary Lamb Mary Anne Lamb (3 December 1764 – 20 May 1847) was an English writer. She is best known for the collaboration with her brother Charles on the collection '' Tales from Shakespeare'' (1807). Mary suffered from mental illness, and in 1796, aged ...

, Theroigne de Méricourt,

Alice James Alice James (August 7, 1848 – March 6, 1892) was an American diarist, sister of novelist Henry James and philosopher and psychologist William James. Her relationship with William was unusually close, and she seems to have been badly affec ...

Anna O Bertha Pappenheim (27 February 1859 – 28 May 1936) was an Austrian-Jewish feminist, a social pioneer, and the founder of the Jewish Women's Association (''). Under the pseudonym Anna O., she was also one of Josef Breuer's best-documented pat ...

, Ida Bauer, Augustine, Elizabeth Severn,

Bryher Bryher ( kw, Breyer "place of hills") is one of the smallest inhabited islands of the Isles of Scilly, with a population of 84 in 2011, spread across . History The name of the island is recorded as ''Brayer'' in 1336 and ''Brear'' in 1500. Ge ...

, Annie Winifred Ellerman, Hilda Doolittle,

Princess Marie Bonaparte Princess Marie Bonaparte (2 July 1882 – 21 September 1962), known as Princess George of Greece and Denmark upon her marriage, was a French author and psychoanalyst, closely linked with Sigmund Freud. Her wealth contributed to the popularity o ...

Anna Freud Anna Freud (3 December 1895 – 9 October 1982) was a British psychoanalyst of Austrian-Jewish descent. She was born in Vienna, the sixth and youngest child of Sigmund Freud and Martha Bernays. She followed the path of her father and contribut ...

Dorothy Burlingham Dorothy Trimble Tiffany Burlingham (11 October 1891 – 19 November 1979) was an American child psychoanalyst and educator. A lifelong friend and partner of Anna Freud, Burlingham is known for her joint work with Freud on the analysis of childre ...

Zelda Fitzgerald Zelda Fitzgerald (; July 24, 1900 – March 10, 1948) was an American novelist, painter, dancer, and socialite. Born in Montgomery, Alabama, she was noted for her beauty and high spirits, and was dubbed by her husband F. Scott Fitzgerald ...

Marilyn Monroe Marilyn Monroe (; born Norma Jeane Mortenson; 1 June 1926 4 August 1962) was an American actress. Famous for playing comedic " blonde bombshell" characters, she became one of the most popular sex symbols of the 1950s and early 1960s, as wel ...

and

Influences

Literature

Kavan was friends with the Welsh writer Rhys Davies, who based his 1975 novel ''Honeysuckle Girl'' on her early life.

Theater and performance

Choreographer and stage director, adapted ''Ice'' for the theater in 2008. ''Silverglass'' by DJ Britton is a play about the relationship between Rhys Davies and Anna Kavan. It was presented as a premiere during the Rhys Davies Short Story Conference 2013 held in Swansea. The play is set in the late 1960s and depicts Davies' late literary recognition as well as Kavan's final tragedy. Both writers lived 'a life of self-invention, in which secrets, sexuality and deep questions of personal identity lurked constantly in the shadows'.

Music and sound art

Thalia Zedek Thalia Zedek (born 1961) is an American singer and guitarist. Active since the early 1980s, she has been a member of several notable alternative rock groups, including Live Skull and Uzi both of which, according to ''Spin'' magazine, "made big ...

is an American singer and guitarist, active since the early 1980s and member of several notable

alternative rock Alternative rock, or alt-rock, is a category of rock music that emerged from the independent music underground of the 1970s and became widely popular in the 1990s. "Alternative" refers to the genre's distinction from mainstream or commerci ...

groups, including

Live Skull Live Skull is a post-punk/experimental rock band from New York City, formed in 1982. In an overview of their abrasive no wave-influenced music, '' Trouser Press'' said, "As part of the same New York avant-noisy scene that spawned Sonic Youth, L ...

and

Uzi The Uzi (; he, עוזי, Ūzi; officially cased as UZI) is a family of Israeli open-bolt, blowback-operated submachine guns and machine pistols first designed by Major Uziel "Uzi" Gal in the late 1940s, shortly after the establishment of the ...

. 'Sleep Has His House was the inspiration for the albu
Sleep Asylum
ref name=Zedek>From the desk of Thalia Zedek : Anna Kavan, interview in Magnet Magazine 28 April 2013 : http://www.magnetmagazine.com/2013/04/28/from-the-desk-of-thalia-zedek-anna-kavan/. of Uzi' released in 1986.

David Tibet David Tibet (born David Michael Bunting; 5 March 1960) is a British poet and artist who founded the music group Current 93, of which he is the only full-time member. He was given the name "Tibet" by Genesis P-Orridge, and in January 2005 he ...

, the primary creative force behind the experimental music/ neofolk music group

Current 93 Current 93 are an English experimental music group, working since the early 1980s in folk-based musical forms. The band was founded in 1982 by David Tibet, who has been Current 93's only constant member. Background Tibet has been the only const ...

, named the group's album '' Sleep Has His House'' after Anna Kavan's book of the same title. San Francisco post-rock band Carta titled a song ''Kavan'' on their album "The Glass Bottom Boat" after Anna Kavan. The song was subsequently released as a remix by

The Declining Winter The Declining Winter is a British band based in Yorkshire, led by Richard Adams, the co-founder of the Domino Records group Hood. The band plays a unique form of pastoral pop taking in influences from lo-fi, electronica and post rock with a s ...

on their album Haunt the Upper Hallways. Floriane Pochon, French artist, created a sound artwork untitled ''Ice Lady'' based on the novel ''Ice''. It was presented during Les Nuits de la Phaune, a live broadcast event initiated by the Marseille-based in 2008.

Visual arts

In an installation named Anna, the Wales-based artist duo

Heather and Ivan Morison Heather and Ivan Morison are a Welsh artist duo known for their conceptual and performative public artworks. The duo, Heather Peak (born 1973) and Ivan Morison (born 1974), are based in North Wales. Work In 2007 they grew and then distributed 10 ...

investigate the construction of the

self The self is an individual as the object of that individual’s own reflective consciousness. Since the ''self'' is a reference by a subject to the same subject, this reference is necessarily subjective. The sense of having a self—or ''selfhoo ...

based on ambiguous narratives. They developed an allegorical piece of object theatre draws on the life and works of Kavan using performance and puppetry to connect the objects and play out "a brutal tale of love and loss set against the approaching threat of the ice".Heather & Ivan Morison website: http://www.morison.info/anna.html . It has been first presented in 2012 at

The Hepworth Wakefield The Hepworth Wakefield is an art museum in Wakefield, West Yorkshire, England, which opened on 21 May 2011. The gallery is situated on the south side of the River Calder and takes its name from artist and sculptor Barbara Hepworth who was born a ...

in Wakefield, England.

Bibliography

As Helen Ferguson

Re-issues after 1939 are under the name Anna Kavan. * '' A Charmed Circle'' (London : Jonathan Cape, 1929
Open Library
* '' Let Me Alone'' (London : Jonathan Cape, 1930
Open Library
* '' The Dark Sisters'' (London : Jonathan Cape, 1930
Open Library
* '' A Stranger Still'' (London : Jonathan Cape, 1935
Open Library
* '' Goose Cross'' (London : John Lane, 1936
Open Library
* '' Rich Get Rich'' (London : John Lane, 1937
Open Library

As Anna Kavan

* '' Asylum Piece'' (London : Jonathan Cape, 194
Open Library
* '' Change The Name'' (London : Jonathan Cape, 1941
Open Library
* '' I Am Lazarus'' (London : Jonathan Cape, 1945
Open Library
* '' Sleep Has His House'' (a.k.a. ''The House of Sleep'' (New York : Doubleday, US ed., 1947) – ''Sleep Has His House'' (London: Cassel, UK ed., 1948)
Open Library
* '' The Horse's Tale'' (with K. T. Bluth) (London : Gaberbocchus Press, 1949
Open Library
* '' A Scarcity of Love'' (Southport, Lancashire: Angus Downie, 1956
Open Library
* '' Eagle's Nest'' (London : Peter Owen, 1957
Open Library
* '' A Bright Green Field and Other Stories'' (London : Peter Owen, 1958
Open Library
* '' Who Are You?'' (Lowestoft, Suffolk: Scorpion Press, 1963
Open Library
* ''

'' (

, London 1967, scheduled for reissue in Christmas 2017
Open Library

Published posthumously

*
Julia and the Bazooka
' (London : Peter Owen, 1970) *
My Soul in China
' (London : Peter Owen, 1975) *
My Madness: Selected Writings
' (London : Macmillan, 1990) *
Mercury
' (London : Peter Owen, 1994) *
The Parson
' (London : Peter Owen, 1995) *
Guilty
' (London : Peter Owen, 2007) *''Machines in the Head: the Selected Short Writing of Anna Kavan'' (London : Peter Owen, 2019)

Journalism

All work published in Horizon : A Review of Literature and Art * 'New Zealand: Answer to an Inquiry', ''Horizon'' 45, Sept 1943 * 'The Case of Bill Williams', ''Horizon'' 50, Feb 1944 * 'Reviews', ''Horizon'' 50, Feb 1944 * 'Reviews', ''Horizon'' 52, April 1944 * 'Reviews', ''Horizon'' 59, Nov 1944 * 'Reviews', ''Horizon'' 62, Feb 1945 * 'Reviews', ''Horizon'' 67, July 1945 * 'Reviews', ''Horizon'' 73, Jan 1946

Anthologized work by Anna Kavan

* "Department of Slight Confusion." In ''Book: A Miscellany''. No. 3, edited by Leo Bensemann & Denis Glover. Christchurch: Caxton Press, 1941. * "Ice Storm." In ''New Zealand New Writing'', edited by Ian Gordon. Wellington: Progressive Publishing Society, 1942. * "I Am Lazarus." ''Horizon'' VII, no. 41, 1943, 353–61. * "New Zealand: An Answer to an Inquiry." ''Horizon'' VIII, no. 45, 1943, 153–61. * "The Big Bang." In ''Modern Short Stories'', edited by Denys Val Baker. London: Staples & Staples, 1943. * "Face of My People." ''Horizon'' IX, no. 53, 1944, 323–35. * "Face of My People." In Little Reviews Anthology 1945, edited by Denys Val Baker. London: Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1945. * "I Am Lazarus." In ''Stories of the Forties'' Vol. 1, edited by Reginald Moore & Woodrow Wyatt. London: Nicholson & Watson, 1945. * "Two New Zealand Pieces." In ''Choice'', edited by William Sansom. London: Progressive Publishing, 1946. * "Brave New Worlds." In ''Horizon'', edited by Cyril Connolly. London, 1946. * "The Professor." In ''Horizon'', edited by Cyril Connolly. London, 1946. * "Face of My People." In Modern British Writing, edited by Denys Val Baker. New York: Vanguard Press, 1947. * "I Am Lazarus." In ''The World Within: Fiction Illuminating Neuroses of Our Time'', edited by Mary Louise W. Aswell. New York: McGraw-Hill Books, 1947. * "The Red Dogs." In ''Penguin New Writing'', Vol. 37, edited by John Lehmann. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1949. * "The Red Dogs." In ''Pleasures of New Writing: An Anthology of Poems, Stories, and Other Prose Pieces from the Pages of New Writing'', edited by John Lehmann. London: John Lehmann, 1952. * "Happy Name." In London Magazine, edited by Alan Ross. London, 1954. * "Palace of Sleep." In ''Stories for the Dead of Night'', edited by Don Congdon. New York: Dell Books, 1957 * "A Bright Green Field." In ''Springtime Two: An Anthology of Current Trends'', edited by Peter Owen & Wendy Owen. London: Peter Owen Ltd., 1958. * "High in the Mountains." In London Magazine, edited by Alan Ross. London, 1958. * "Five More Days to Countdown." In ''Encounter'' XXXI, no. 1, 1968, 45–49. * "Julia and the Bazooka." In ''Encounter'' XXXII, no. 2, 1969, 16–19. * "World of Heroes." In ''Encounter'' XXXIII, no. 4, 1969, 9–13. * "The Mercedes." In London Magazine 1970, 17–21. * "Edge of Panic." ''In Vogue'', 1 October 1971, 75–83. * "Sleep Has His House" excerpts. In ''The Tiger Garden: A Book of Writers' Dreams''. Foreword by Anthony Stevens. London: Serpent's Tail, 1996 * "The Zebra Struck" In ''The Vintage Book of Amnesia'', edited by Jonathan Lethem. New York: Vintage Books, 2000

Further sources

Biographies

* The Case of Anna Kavan : A Biography, by David Callard. London: Peter Owen, 1994

by Jeremy Reed. London: Peter Owen, 2006
Anna Kavan's New-Zealand
by Jennifer Sturm. Auckland: Random House Books, 2009 * Stranger Still: The Works of Anna Kavan, by Francis Booth. London:Lulu.com, 2013

Major archives

The largest collection of archival material from Kavan is held by the University of Tulsa's McFarlin Library, Department of Special Collections and University Archives. This includes her personal archive of manuscripts and artwork in the Anna Kavan papers, 1867–1991; further material in the Meic Stephens collection of Anna Kavan ephemera, 1943–1971; the Richard R. Centing collection of Anna Kavan, 1943–1991; David A. Callard collection of Anna Kavan; and the Anais Nin papers, 1969–1992. Other collections beyond Tulsa include The Peter Owen Archives at the

Harry Ransom Center The Harry Ransom Center (until 1983 the Humanities Research Center) is an archive, library and museum at the University of Texas at Austin, specializing in the collection of literary and cultural artifacts from the Americas and Europe for the pur ...

, University of Texas with correspondence between Kavan and her publisher Peter Owen and related material. Other archives contain letters from Kavan to publishers include the William A Bradley Literary Agency, Francis Henry King, Scorpion Press,

John Lehmann Rudolf John Frederick Lehmann (2 June 1907 – 7 April 1987) was an English poet and man of letters. He founded the periodicals ''New Writing'' and '' The London Magazine'', and the publishing house of John Lehmann Limited. Biography Born i ...

, Kay Dick and Gerald Hamilton. Letters from Kavan and papers relating to posthumous publication are included in the Rhys Davis Archive in the National Library of Wales. Letters from Kavan to Walter Ian Hamilton Papers between 1940 and 1955 are in the Alexander Turnbull Library, National Library of New Zealand. Other correspondence can be found at the Jonathan Cape files in the Random House Archives at the University of Reading and the Koestler Archive in Edinburgh University Library, Special Collections.

Notes

External links

Anna Kavan SocietyPeter Owen Publishers

Anna Kavan aka Helen Ferguson
(redmood.com/kavan) – created by Jan Hanford, archived 2004-12-04
Anna Kavan on Open LibraryAnna Kavan by Jennifer Sturm
at CulturalIcons.co.uk – discussion by Dr Jennifer Sturm and Debbie Knowles for the Cultural Icons project (audio and video) * *
Anna Kavan papers, 1867-1991, Department of Special Collections and University Archives, McFarlin Library, The University of Tulsa

Meic Stephens collection of Anna Kavan ephemera, 1943-1971, Department of Special Collections and University Archives, McFarlin Library, The University of Tulsa

Richard R. Centing collection of Anna Kavan, 1943-1991, Department of Special Collections and University Archives, McFarlin Library, The University of Tulsa

David A. Callard collection of Anna Kavan, Department of Special Collections and University Archives, McFarlin Library, The University of Tulsa

Anais Nin papers, 1969-1992, Department of Special Collections and University Archives, McFarlin Library, The University of Tulsa
{{DEFAULTSORT:Kavan, Anna 1901 births 1968 deaths English short story writers People educated at Parsons Mead School British women short story writers British women novelists 20th-century British women writers 20th-century British novelists 20th-century British short story writers British expatriates in France

Biography

Early life

As Anna Kavan

Death and legacy

Modern scholarship and interpretations

Feminist readings

Genre-bending and experimental writing

Politics of madness

Influences

Literature

Theater and performance

Music and sound art

Visual arts

Bibliography

As Helen Ferguson

As Anna Kavan

Published posthumously

Journalism

Anthologized work by Anna Kavan

Further sources

Biographies

Major archives

See also

Notes

External links