William Norman Trevor Sansom

FRSL The Royal Society of Literature (RSL) is a learned society founded in 1820, by George IV of the United Kingdom, King George IV, to "reward literary merit and excite literary talent". A charity that represents the voice of literature in the UK, th ...

(18 January 1912 – 20 April 1976) was a British novelist, travel and

short story A short story is a piece of prose fiction that typically can be read in one sitting and focuses on a self-contained incident or series of linked incidents, with the intent of evoking a single effect or mood. The short story is one of the oldest ...

writer known for his highly descriptive prose style.

Profile

Sansom was born in London, the third son of Ernest Brooks Sansom, M.I.N.A., a naval architect, by his wife Mabel (née Clark).''Who Was Who'', A. & C. Black, 1971.''World Authors, 1900–1950, volume 4'', H. W. Wilson, 1996, p. 2296. He was educated at

Uppingham School Uppingham School is a public school (English independent day and boarding school for pupils 13-18) in Uppingham, Rutland, England, founded in 1584 by Robert Johnson (rector), Robert Johnson, the Archdeacon of Leicester, who also established Oa ...

Rutland Rutland () is a ceremonial county and unitary authority in the East Midlands, England. The county is bounded to the west and north by Leicestershire, to the northeast by Lincolnshire and the southeast by Northamptonshire. Its greatest len ...

, before moving to

Bonn The federal city of Bonn ( lat, Bonna) is a city on the banks of the Rhine in the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia, with a population of over 300,000. About south-southeast of Cologne, Bonn is in the southernmost part of the Rhine-Ruhr r ...

to learn German. Named 'Norman Trevor' at birth, he was called 'William' as a child and used this name throughout his life. From 1930 Sansom worked in international banking for the British chapter of a German bank, and in 1935 he moved to an advertising company where he worked until the outbreak of World War II. Then he became a full-time London firefighter, serving throughout

The Blitz The Blitz was a German bombing campaign against the United Kingdom in 1940 and 1941, during the Second World War. The term was first used by the British press and originated from the term , the German word meaning 'lightning war'. The Germa ...

. His experiences during that time inspired much of his writing, including many of the stories in the celebrated collection ''Fireman Flower''. He also appeared in

Humphrey Jennings Frank Humphrey Sinkler Jennings (19 August 1907 – 24 September 1950) was an English documentary filmmaker and one of the founders of the Mass Observation organisation. Jennings was described by film critic and director Lindsay Anderson in 195 ...

's famous film about the Blitz, ''

Fires Were Started ''Fires Were Started'' is a 1943 British film written and directed by Humphrey Jennings. Filmed in documentary style, it shows the lives of firefighters through the Blitz during the Second World War. The film uses actual firemen (including Cyril ...

'', as the fireman who plays the piano. After the war, Sansom became a full-time writer. In 1946 and 1947 he was awarded two literary prizes by the Society of Authors, and in 1951 was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. In 1954, he married actress Ruth Grundy, daughter of Norman Grundy, FCA. They had two sons, Sean (adopted by Sansom; the son of Ruth Grundy's previous marriage to Grey Wilson Blake) and Nicholas. As well as exploring war-torn London, Sansom's writing deals with romance (''The Face of Innocence''), murder ("Various Temptations"), comedy ("A Last Word") and supernatural horror ("A Woman Seldom Found"). The latter, perhaps his most anthologized story, combines detailed description with narrative tension to unravel a young man's encounter with a bizarre creature in Rome. Sansom died suddenly at

St Mary's Hospital, London St Mary's Hospital is an NHS hospital in Paddington, in the City of Westminster, London, founded in 1845. Since the UK's first academic health science centre was created in 2008, it has been operated by Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust, wh ...

, after suffering serious illness.

Selected works

Novels

* ''The Body'' (1949) * ''The Face of Innocence'' (1951) * ''The Last Hours of Sandra Lee'' (1961) * ''The Guilt in Wandering'' (1963) * ''Hans Feet in love'' (1971) * ''Skimpy'' (1974) * ''A Young Wife's Tale'' (1974) * ''The Cautious Heart'' * ''The Loving Eye'' * ''A Bed of Roses'' * ''Goodbye'' (1966)

Short novels

* ''Three'' * ''The Equilibriad''

Short story collections

* ''Fireman Flower'' (1944) * ''South'' (1948) * ''Something Terrible, Something Lovely'' (1948) * ''The Passionate North'' (1950) * ''A Touch of the Sun'' (1952) * ''Lord Love Us'' (1954) * ''A Contest of Ladies'' (1956) * ''Among the Dahlias'' (1957) * ''The Stories of William Sansom'' (1963) * ''The Ulcerated Milkman'' (1966) * ''The Marmalade Bird'' (1973) * ''Various Temptations'' (2002)

Non-fiction

* ''Westminster at War'' (1947) * ''Pleasures Strange and Simple'' (1953) * ''The Icicle and the Sun'' (1958) * ''Blue Skies, Brown Studies'' (1961) * ''Away to It All'' (1964) * ''A Book of Christmas'' (1968) * ''Grand Tour Today'' (1968) * ''The Birth of a Story'' (1972) * ''Proust and His World'' (1973)

Children's literature

* ''It Was Really Charlie's Castle'' * ''The Light that Went Out''

As illustrator

* ''Who's Zoo'' by Michael Braude (1963) – light verse; humor and satire, ; animals from A to Z in verse,

Citations

In his classical work ''

The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life ''The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life'' is a 1956 sociology, sociological book by Erving Goffman, in which the author uses the imagery of theatre in order to portray the importance of Social relation, human social interaction; this approac ...

'',

Erving Goffman Erving Goffman (11 June 1922 – 19 November 1982) was a Canadian-born sociology, sociologist, Social psychology (sociology), social psychologist, and writer, considered by some "the most influential American sociologist of the twentieth ...

used an extended paragraph of Sansom's ''A Contest of Ladies'' to develop his model of the social role and the dramaturgical approach to sociology.Erving Goffman, ''The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life'', Anchor Books, 1959, pp. 4ff.

References

External links

William Sansom FRSL
copyright the William Sansom Estate * tp://trf.education.gouv.fr/pub/edutel/siac/siac2/jury/2004/caplp_ext/angl-lettr7.pdf Short story "A Woman Seldom Found"*
Biography
at eNotes.com

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Sansom, William 1912 births 1976 deaths English short story writers English travel writers English children's writers Fellows of the Royal Society of Literature People educated at Uppingham School Writers from London 20th-century English novelists 20th-century British short story writers Weird fiction writers Civil Defence Service personnel