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 A pen name, also called a ''nom de plume'' or a literary double, is a pseudonym (or, in some cases, a variant form of a real name) adopted by an author and printed on the title page or by-line of their works in place of their real name. A pen na ...

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. The ...

, 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 considera ...

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 Suicide is the act of intentionally causing one's own death. Mental disorders (including depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, personality disorders, anxiety disorders), physical disorders (such as chronic fatigue syndrome), and ...

in 1911. After his death, Kavan returned to the UK where she was a boarder at Parsons Mead School in Ashstead and

Malvern College Malvern College is an independent coeducational day and boarding school in Malvern, Worcestershire, England. It is a public school in the British sense of the term and is a member of the Rugby Group and of the Headmasters' and Headmistresses ...

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 impor ...

''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 The French Riviera (known in French as the ; oc, Còsta d'Azur ; literal translation "Azure Coast") is the Mediterranean coastline of the southeast corner of France. There is no official boundary, but it is usually considered to extend from ...

where she was introduced to

heroin Heroin, also known as diacetylmorphine and diamorphine among other names, is a potent opioid mainly used as a recreational drug for its euphoric effects. Medical grade diamorphine is used as a pure hydrochloride salt. Various white and brown ...

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 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. From September 1939 to February 1943, she spent six months in

Carmel-by-the-Sea, California Carmel-by-the-Sea (), often simply called Carmel, is a city in Monterey County, California, United States, founded in 1902 and incorporated on October 31, 1916. Situated on the Monterey Peninsula, Carmel is known for its natural scenery and r ...

in 1940 ; it inspired her novella My Soul in China, published posthumously in 1975. She also visited the island of

Bali Bali () is a province of Indonesia and the westernmost of the Lesser Sunda Islands. East of Java and west of Lombok, the province includes the island of Bali and a few smaller neighbouring islands, notably Nusa Penida, Nusa Lembongan, and ...

, Indonesia, and stayed for twenty-two months in

Napier, New Zealand Napier ( ; mi, Ahuriri) is a city on the eastern coast of the North Island of New Zealand and the seat of the Hawke's Bay region. It is a beachside city with a seaport, known for its sunny climate, esplanade lined with Norfolk Pines and exten ...

, 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 List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

three times and the

Suez Canal The Suez Canal ( arz, قَنَاةُ ٱلسُّوَيْسِ, ') is an artificial sea-level waterway in Egypt, connecting the Mediterranean Sea to the Red Sea through the Isthmus of Suez and dividing Africa and Asia. The long canal is a popul ...

twice. Returning to England early 1943, she worked briefly with soldiers suffering from

war neurosis Combat stress reaction (CSR) is acute behavioral disorganization as a direct result of the trauma of war. Also known as "combat fatigue", "battle fatigue", or "battle neurosis", it has some overlap with the diagnosis of acute stress reaction used ...

at the Mill Hill Emergency Hospital and studied for a diploma in Psychological Medicine. She also took a secretarial position at

Horizon The horizon is the apparent line that separates the surface of a celestial body from its sky when viewed from the perspective of an observer on or near the surface of the relevant body. This line divides all viewing directions based on whether ...

, 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 combin ...

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 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 Ge ...

, a psychiatrist, pioneer in the field of existential psychology and lifelong friend of

Freud Sigmund Freud ( , ; born Sigismund Schlomo Freud; 6 May 1856 – 23 September 1939) was an Austrian neurologist and the founder of psychoanalysis, a clinical method for evaluating and treating pathologies explained as originating in conflicts in ...

. 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 opaq ...

'', 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 t ...

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; as ...

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 univers ...

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 lite ...

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, ''The ...

Brian Aldiss Brian Wilson Aldiss (; 18 August 1925 – 19 August 2017) was an English people, 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 Aldi ...

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 Kensington is a district in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea in the West of Central London. The district's commercial heart is Kensington High Street, running on an east–west axis. The north-east is taken up by Kensington Garden ...

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 Doris May Lessing (; 22 October 1919 – 17 November 2013) was a British-Zimbabwean novelist. She was born to British parents in Iran, where she lived until 1925. Her family then moved to Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), where she remain ...

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 her ...

, Christopher Priest, Nina Allan, Virginia Ironside 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 st ...

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 Hysteria is a term used colloquially to mean ungovernable emotional excess and can refer to a temporary state of mind or emotion. In the nineteenth century, hysteria was considered a diagnosable physical illness in women. It is assumed that ...

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 ...

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 relati ...

and World War II 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 An autobiography, sometimes informally called an autobio, is a self-written account of one's own life. It is a form of biography. Definition The word "autobiography" was first used deprecatingly by William Taylor in 1797 in the English peri ...

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,

surrealism Surrealism is a cultural movement that developed in Europe in the aftermath of World War I in which artists depicted unnerving, illogical scenes and developed techniques to allow the unconscious mind to express itself. Its aim was, according to l ...

and

absurdism Absurdism is the philosophical theory that existence in general is absurd. This implies that the world lacks meaning or a higher purpose and is not fully intelligible by reason. The term "absurd" also has a more specific sense in the context ...

. 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 b ...

' ''Fictions'', Calvino'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 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 psychiatry. Initial psyc ...

and

psychotherapy Psychotherapy (also psychological therapy, talk therapy, or talking therapy) is the use of psychological methods, particularly when based on regular personal interaction, to help a person change behavior, increase happiness, and overcome prob ...

. As well as being treated in private asylums and nursing homes, Kavan underwent a short analysis at the Tavistock Clinic, experienced Ludwig Binswanger's method of existential psychotherapy 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 questionab ...

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, Anna O, 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. G ...

, Annie Winifred Ellerman,

Hilda Doolittle Hilda Doolittle (September 10, 1886 – September 27, 1961) was an American modernist poet, novelist, and memoirist who wrote under the name H.D. throughout her life. Her career began in 1911 after she moved to London and co-founded the ...

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 contrib ...

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 a ...

, Marilyn Monroe 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 Swansea (; cy, Abertawe ) is a coastal city and the second-largest city of Wales. It forms a principal area, officially known as the City and County of Swansea ( cy, links=no, Dinas a Sir Abertawe). The city is the twenty-fifth largest in ...

. 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 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 commercia ...

groups, including Live Skull and Uzi. '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 Experimental music is a general label for any music or music genre that pushes existing boundaries and genre definitions. Experimental compositional practice is defined broadly by exploratory sensibilities radically opposed to, and questioning of, ...

neofolk Neofolk, also known as apocalyptic folk, is a form of experimental music blending elements of folk and industrial music, which emerged in punk rock circles in the 1980s. Neofolk may either be solely acoustic or combine acoustic folk instrumenta ...

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 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 ''selfhood ...

based on ambiguous narratives. They developed an allegorical piece of object theatre draws on the life and works of Kavan using performance and

puppetry Puppetry is a form of theatre or performance that involves the manipulation of puppets – inanimate objects, often resembling some type of human or animal figure, that are animated or manipulated by a human called a puppeteer. Such a perform ...

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 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 The Gaberbocchus Press was a London publishing house founded in 1948 by the artist couple Stefan and Franciszka Themerson. Alongside the Themersons, the other directors of the Press were the translator Barbara Wright and the artist Gwen Barnar ...

, 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 The University of Tulsa (TU) is a private research university in Tulsa, Oklahoma. It has a historic affiliation with the Presbyterian Church and the campus architectural style is predominantly Collegiate Gothic. The school traces its origin t ...

'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 p ...

, 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 in ...

, 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 The National Library of Wales ( cy, Llyfrgell Genedlaethol Cymru), Aberystwyth, is the national legal deposit library of Wales and is one of the Welsh Government sponsored bodies. It is the biggest library in Wales, holding over 6.5 million bo ...

. Letters from Kavan to Walter Ian Hamilton Papers between 1940 and 1955 are in the Alexander Turnbull Library,

National Library of New Zealand The National Library of New Zealand ( mi, Te Puna Mātauranga o Aotearoa) is New Zealand's legal deposit library charged with the obligation to "enrich the cultural and economic life of New Zealand and its interchanges with other nations" (''Nat ...

. Other correspondence can be found at the

Jonathan Cape Jonathan Cape is a London publishing firm founded in 1921 by Herbert Jonathan Cape, who was head of the firm until his death in 1960. Cape and his business partner Wren Howard set up the publishing house in 1921. They established a reputation ...

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