V. S. Pritchett

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Sir Victor Sawdon Pritchett CH CBE (December 16, 1900 - March 20, 1997), was a British writer and critic. He was particularly known for his short stories, collected in a number of volumes. His most famous books are the autobiographical novels A Cab at the Door (1968) and Midnight Oil (1971).

Contents

[edit] Biography

Victor Sawdon Pritchett was born in Ipswich, Suffolk, the first of four children of Walter Sawdon Pritchett and Beatrice Helena (née Martin). His father, a London businessman in financial difficulties, had come to Ipswich to start a shop selling newspapers and stationery. The business was struggling and the couple were lodging over a toyshop at 41 St Nicholas Street where Pritchett was born on December 16, 1900. Beatrice had expected a girl, whom she planned to name after the Queen, and Pritchett never liked his first name, which is why he always styled himself with his initials; even close friends would call him VSP.

Pritchett's father was a steady Christian Scientist and unsteady in all else. Walter and Beatrice had come to Ipswich to be near her sister who had married money and lived in Warrington Road. Within a year Walter was declared bankrupt, the family moved to Woodford, Essex, then to Derby, and he began selling women's clothing and accessories as a travelling salesman. Pritchett was soon sent with his brother Cyril to live with their paternal grandparents in Sedbergh, where the boys attended their first school. Walter's business failures, his casual attitude to credit, and his easy deceit1 obliged the family to move frequently. The family was reunited but life was always precarious; they tended to live in London suburbs with members of Beatrice's family. They returned to Ipswich in 1910, living for a year near Cauldwell Hall Road, trying to evade Walter's creditors. At this time Pritchett attended St. John's School. Subsequently Pritchett attended Alleyn's School, Dulwich, and Dulwich College but he stayed nowhere long. When his father went to fight in World War I, Pritchett left school. Later in the war Walter turned his hand to aircraft design), of which he knew nothing, and his later ventures included art needlework, property speculation, and faith healing.

Pritchett was a leather buyer from 1916 to 1920, when he moved to Paris, where he worked as a shop assistant. In 1923 he started writing for the Christian Science Monitor, which sent him to Ireland and Spain. From 1926 he wrote reviews for the paper and for the New Statesman, which later appointed him literary editor.

Pritchett's first book described his journey across Spain (Marching Spain 1928) and Clare Drummer (1929) was about his experiences in Ireland. Whilst in Ireland he met his first wife, Evelyn Vigors, but neither was happy in the marriage.

Pritchett published five novels but he claimed not to enjoy their creation. His reputation was established by a collection of short stories (The Spanish Virgin and Other Stories 1932).

In 1936 he divorced his first wife, and married Dorothy Rudge Roberts; they had two children. The marriage lasted until Pritchett's death although they both also had other affairs.

During World War II Pritchett worked for the BBC and the Ministry of Information whilst continuing to submit a weekly essay to the New Statesman. After the war he wrote widely and he started taking teaching positions at universities in the United States: Princeton (1953), the University of California (1962), Columbia University and Smith College. He was fluent in German, Spanish, and French, and published a biography of Honoré de Balzac in 1973, but he did not need to know the language of his subjects. He wrote successful biographies of Ivan Turgenev (1977) and Anton Chekhov (1988), although he did not know Russian and had never visited the Soviet Union.

Pritchett was knighted in 1975 for his services to literature and became Companion of Honour in 1993. His awards include Heinemann Award (1969), PEN Award (1974), W.H. Smith Literary Award (1990), and Golden Pen Award (1993). He died of a stroke in London on March 20, 1997.

[edit] Bibliography

  • Marching Spain, 1928
  • Clare Drummer, 1929
  • The Spanish Virgin and Other Stories, 1930
  • Shirley Sanz, 1932
  • Nothing Like Leather, 1935
  • Dead Man Leading, 1937
  • This England, 1938 (editor)
  • You Make Your Own Life, 1938
  • In My Good Books, 1942
  • It May Never Happen, 1945
  • Novels and Stories by Robert Louis Stevenson, 1945 (editor)
  • Build the Ships, 1946
  • The Living Novel, 1946
  • Why Do I Write?, 1948
  • Mr. Beluncle, 1951
  • Books in General, 1953
  • The Spanish Temper, 1954
  • Collected Stories, 1956
  • The Sailor, The Sense of Humour and Other Stories, 1956
  • When My Girl Comes Home, 1961
  • London Perceived, 1962
  • The Key to My Heart, 1963
  • Foreign Faces, 1964
  • New York Proclaimed, 1965
  • The Working Novelist, 1965
  • The Saint and Other Stories, 1966
  • Dublin, 1967
  • A Cab at the Door, 1968
  • Blind Love, 1969
  • George Meredith and English Comedy, 1970
  • Midnight Oil, 1971
  • Penguin Modern Stories, 1971 (with others)
  • Balzac, 1973
  • The Camberwell Beauty, 1974
  • The Gentle Barbarian: the Life and Work of Turgenev, 1977
  • Selected Stories, 1978
  • On the Edge of the Cliff, 1979
  • Myth Makers, 1979
  • The Tale Bearers, 1980
  • The Oxford Book of Short Stories, 1981 (editor)
  • The Turn of the Years, 1982 (with R. Stone)
  • Collected Stories, 1982
  • More Collected Stories, 1983
  • The Other Side of a Frontier, 1984
  • A Man of Letters, 1985
  • Chekhov, 1988
  • A Careless Widow and Other Stories, 1989
  • Complete Short Stories, 1990
  • At Home and Abroad, 1990
  • Lasting Impressions, 1990
  • Complete Collected Essays, 1991
  • The Pritchett Century, 1997

[edit] Notes

Note 1: He habitually pretended to be a member of the Athenaeum Club to obtain credit falsely, for example.

[edit] External links

[edit] Sources

  • D. Baldwin, V.S. Pritchett, (1987)
  • Joseph Epstein, 'The enduring V. S. Pritchett', The New Criterion, (March, 1993)
  • Robert Fulford, 'V.S. Pritchett', The Globe and Mail, (Toronto, Canada: 2 April 1997)
  • Steven R. Serafin (ed), Encyclopedia of World Literature in the 20th Century, vol. 3, (1999)
  • Martin Seymour-Smith and Andrew C. Kimmens, World Authors 1900-1950, vol. 3, (1996)
  • John J. Stinson, V.S. Pritchett: A Study of the Short Fiction,(New York,1992)
  • Jeremy Treglown, V.S. Pritchett: A Working Life (London: Chatto & Windus, 2004) ISBN 0-7011-7322-X
Persondata
NAME Pritchett, Victor Sawdon
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Pritchett, V. S.
SHORT DESCRIPTION writer
DATE OF BIRTH December 16, 1900
PLACE OF BIRTH Ipswich, Suffolk
DATE OF DEATH March 20, 1997
PLACE OF DEATH London, England
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