Margaret Kennedy

Margaret Kennedy was a novelist and playwright, most famous for her second novel The Constant Nymph. She was born in London on April 23, 1896, the eldest of four children, and holidayed with her family in Cornwall for years. Margaret read history at Somerville College, Oxford. Margaret graduated with the equivalent of a second-class degree in history in 1919 (the year before women were allowed to take their degrees at Oxford). In 1923 her first novel was published, The Ladies of Lyndon, which received little attention. While she was working on this book she had gone to Pertisau on Achensee in the Austrian Tyrol to stay with friends, and discovered a passion for mountains and walking. It also gave her a setting for her next novel, The Constant Nymph, and she returned to Pertisau to finish the novel. The Constant Nymph was widely acclaimed, and Margaret received congratulations from the leading literary figures of the day, including Thomas Hardy, George Moore, A E Housman and Arnold Bennett. She married in 1925, and had three children. With the approach of war Margaret's health began to deteriorate due to emotional stress. Margaret visited London frequently for committees and to see her husband, and eventually moved her children and Nanny out of their rented home into a hotel, which made her housekeeping much easier. In July 1944 their London house was completely destroyed by a VI flying bomb. In 1947 Margaret visited the USA for the first time, and began writing a new cycle of novels, and an acclaimed biography of Jane Austen. More critical writing followed, accompanied by increasing deafness. David Davies was knighted in 1952. His death in 1964 was a great blow to Margaret. Her health continued to deteriorate, and she died in 1967 aged seventy-one.