Jocelyn Noel Christine Playfair (; 21 August 190414 May 1997) was a British novelist. She was born in

Lucknow Lucknow (, ) is the capital and the largest city of the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh and it is also the second largest urban agglomeration in Uttar Pradesh. Lucknow is the administrative headquarters of the eponymous district and division ...

, British India, the daughter of Lieutenant-Colonel Noel Malan. Both of her parents were of

French Huguenot The Huguenots ( , also , ) were a religious group of French Protestants who held to the Reformed, or Calvinist, tradition of Protestantism. The term, which may be derived from the name of a Swiss political leader, the Genevan burgomaster Bez ...

descent. The year she was born (1904), her father accompanied

Francis Younghusband Lieutenant Colonel Sir Francis Edward Younghusband, (31 May 1863 – 31 July 1942) was a British Army officer, explorer, and spiritual writer. He is remembered for his travels in the Far East and Central Asia; especially the 1904 British e ...

on the

Younghusband Expedition The British expedition to Tibet, also known as the Younghusband expedition, began in December 1903 and lasted until September 1904. The expedition was effectively a temporary invasion by British Indian Armed Forces under the auspices of the ...

Tibet Tibet (; ''Böd''; ) is a region in East Asia, covering much of the Tibetan Plateau and spanning about . It is the traditional homeland of the Tibetan people. Also resident on the plateau are some other ethnic groups such as Monpa people, ...

. She married Ian Playfair in 1930, who was in the

Royal Engineers The Corps of Royal Engineers, usually called the Royal Engineers (RE), and commonly known as the ''Sappers'', is a corps of the British Army. It provides military engineering and other technical support to the British Armed Forces and is heade ...

and later was appointed the rank of Major-General. After the birth of their two sons, the couple returned to Britain in the late 1930s. She wrote ten books between 1939 and 1952.Profile of Jocelyn Playfair
/ref> She died in

Hounslow Hounslow () is a large suburban district of West London, west-southwest of Charing Cross. It is the administrative centre of the London Borough of Hounslow, and is identified in the London Plan as one of the 12 metropolitan centres in Gr ...

, London, on 14May 1997.''England & Wales, Civil Registration Death Index, 1916-2007''

Bibliography

*''Murder without Mystery'' (1939) *''Storm in a Village'' (1940) *''Eastern Week-End'' (1940) *''The Mill'' (1942) *''A House in the Country'' (1944), republished by

Persephone Books ''Persephone Books'' is an independent publisher based in Bath, England. Founded in 1999 by Nicola Beauman, Persephone Books reprints works largely by women writers of the late 19th and 20th century, though a few books by men are included. Th ...

in 2002 () *''Men Without Armour'' (1946) *''The Desirable Residence'' (1947) *''The Fire and the Rose'' (1948) *''A Man called Miranda'' (1949) *''The Nettlebed'' (1952)

References

Links

Information on ''A House in the Country''

Author Profile at Persephone Books

Jocelyn Playfair
at

WorldCat WorldCat is a union catalog that itemizes the collections of tens of thousands of institutions (mostly libraries), in many countries, that are current or past members of the OCLC global cooperative. It is operated by OCLC, Inc. Many of the OCL ...

1904 births 1997 deaths Writers from Lucknow British women novelists 20th-century British women writers 20th-century British novelists British people in colonial India {{UK-writer-stub