Kathleen Farrell (4 August 1912 – 25 November 1999) was a British novelist of the

post–World War II The aftermath of World War II was the beginning of a new era started in late 1945 (when World War II ended) for all countries involved, defined by the decline of all colonial empires and simultaneous rise of two superpowers; the Soviet Union (US ...

period who was known for her unsparing and sometimes bitingly funny studies of character.

Biography

Kathleen Farrell was born in

London London is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a majo ...

on 4 August 1912. The daughter of a wealthy builder, she was financially independent throughout her life. During

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 opposin ...

, she served as an assistant to

Hastings Lees-Smith Hastings Bertrand Lees-Smith PC (26 January 1878 – 18 December 1941) was a British Liberal turned Labour politician who was briefly in the cabinet as President of the Board of Education in 1931. He was the acting Leader of the Opposition and ...

, the secretary general of the Labour Party. Following the war, she founded a literary agency called Gilbert Wright. Farrell's first book, ''Johnny's Not Home from the Fair'' (1942), was in part a ghost story and its dedication—"For my mother, without her permission"—hinted at autobiographical elements. Following this, she wrote five novels of life in the 1950s: ''Mistletoe Malice'' (1951), ''Take It to Heart'' (1953), ''The Cost of Living'' (1956), ''The Common Touch'' (1958), and ''Limitations of Love'' (1962). In Limitations of Love the characters Mr Flask & Mrs Walk appear, which is a play on

Flask Walk Flask Walk is a street in Hampstead in the London Borough of Camden. It runs eastwards from Hampstead High Street to a junction with Well Walk and New End Square. It is primarily residential but the western end of the street is a pedestrianise ...

Hampstead Hampstead () is an area in London, which lies northwest of Charing Cross, and extends from Watling Street, the A5 road (Roman Watling Street) to Hampstead Heath, a large, hilly expanse of parkland. The area forms the northwest part of the Lon ...

where Farrell lived with Kay Dick. Farrell, who was typically compared to Barbara Pym in contemporary reviews, was known for her sharp depictions of character, frequently verging on the cynical. C. P. Snow praised ''Mistletoe Malice'' as a "savagely witty and abnormally penetrating" study of a dysfunctional family collected together at Christmas. ''The Cost of Living'' is a darkly humorous portrait of two impoverished women—a freelance typist and an artist—and their attempts to meet people and develop romantic relationships. A passage from this book gives a sense of Farrell's characteristically acerbic tone: :"By that time I had nearly finished the novel. It seemed to get longer and longer towards the end; and sadder, too, and much sillier. There was only one woman in it, and she spent most of her life retching and clinging to park railings; and when she wasn’t doing that she was leaning her forehead against the wall in some dark alleyway. Leaning her forehead against the wall was to stop her being completely overcome by nausea. I can’t remember that it ever did. I wondered how such young men managed to make women feel so sick, so often. And I thought, poor young men, how they suffer." She was well connected in British literary circles, counting among her friends

Ivy Compton-Burnett Dame Ivy Compton-Burnett, (; 5 June 188427 August 1969) was an English novelist, published in the original editions as I. Compton-Burnett. She was awarded the 1955 James Tait Black Memorial Prize for her novel ''Mother and Son''. Her works co ...

, Olivia Manning, Pamela Hansford Johnson, and Quentin Crisp, and she was known for encouraging up-and-coming writers. At the same time, it is said that she belonged to an informal group that has been called, quasi-jokingly, "The Lady Novelists' Anti-Elizabeth League," whose members were apparently united in their dislike of the work of novelist

Elizabeth Taylor Dame Elizabeth Rosemond Taylor (February 27, 1932 – March 23, 2011) was a British-American actress. She began her career as a child actress in the early 1940s and was one of the most popular stars of classical Hollywood cinema in the 1950s. ...

. Other members of the league are said to have included Johnson, Manning, Kate O'Brien, and

Kay Dick Kathleen Elsie "Kay" Dick (29 July 1915 – 19 October 2001) was an English journalist, writer, novelist and autobiographer, who sometimes wrote under the name Edward LaneMichael De-la-Noy, De-la-Noy, Michael (24 October 2001)"Kay Dick"(obituary) ...

, who was Farrell's life partner for some twenty years.

Death and legacy

Farrell's novels, though critically well received, did not sell particularly well. She died in

Hove Hove is a seaside resort and one of the two main parts of the city of Brighton and Hove, along with Brighton in East Sussex, England. Originally a "small but ancient fishing village" surrounded by open farmland, it grew rapidly in the 19th cen ...

East Sussex East Sussex is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan county in South East England on the English Channel coast. It is bordered by Kent to the north and east, West Sussex to the west, and Surrey to the north-west. The largest settlement in East Su ...

, on 25 November 1999. Farrell's papers are held by the University of Texas, Austin, and include drafts and notes for several unpublished novels and stories.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Farrell, Kathleen 1912 births 1999 deaths 20th-century British novelists English women novelists Writers from London 20th-century English women writers