Olivia Manning
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
- Olivia Manning is also the name of the wife of Archie Manning and mother of Eli and Peyton Manning.
Olivia Manning (born March 2, 1908 in Portsmouth – died July 23, 1980 on the Isle of Wight) was a noted British novelist. She studied at the Portsmouth School of Art then escaped Portsmouth to work at Peter Jones (department store), the Medici Society and for MGM. Her first novel under her own name, The Wind Changes, was published in 1937. Before that she had written romantic thrillers under the pseudonym Jacob Morrow.
Manning married her husband R.D. "Reggie" Smith in 1939. He was a British Council teacher and later a BBC radio producer. In 1955, The Doves of Venus was published.
Olivia Manning is best known for Fortunes of War, a narrative consisting of two trilogies (The Balkan Trilogy and The Levant Trilogy) chronicling the wartime experiences of a group of English expatriates who find themselves moving between Romania, Greece, Egypt and Palestine as World War II progresses.
Anthony Burgess described Fortunes of War as ‘the finest fictional record of the war produced by a British writer’. Certainly, the first two volumes (The Great Fortune, published in 1960 and The Spoilt City, published in 1962) make compelling reading. Set against the background of Bucharest in early wartime, they have a superb period feel, chronicling the changes in Romanian society (and the lives of the British expatriate community) as the corrupt regime of King Carol II tries unsuccessfully to keep Romania out of the war. The leading characters, Harriet and Guy Pringle (the latter a lecturer and a passionate communist), are based on Manning herself and her husband R. D. Smith.
[edit] Sources
Braybrooke, Neville and June Olivia Manning: A Life, Chatto, November 2004 ISBN 0-7011-7749-7
| Persondata | |
|---|---|
| NAME | Manning, Olivia |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | |
| SHORT DESCRIPTION | novelist |
| DATE OF BIRTH | March 2, 1908 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Portsmouth. England |
| DATE OF DEATH | July 23, 1980 |
| PLACE OF DEATH | Isle of Wight, England |
