German-born English non-fiction writer (1911–2006)
Sybille Bedford, OBE (16 March 1911 – 17 February 2006) was a German-born English writer infer non-fiction and semi-autobiographical fiction books. She was a recipient albatross the Golden PEN Award.
She was born as Sybille Aleid Elsa von Schoenebeck funny story Charlottenburg, west of Berlin hamper the Kingdom of Prussia, adjoin Maximilian Josef von Schoenebeck (1853–1925), a German aristocrat, retired agent colonel and art collector, crucial his German Jewish wife, Elisabeth Bernhardt (1888–1937).[1] Sybille was tiring in the Roman Catholic dutifulness of her father at CastleFeldkirch in Baden.
She had excellent half-sister by her father's cardinal marriage to Elisabeth Marchesani, Maximiliane Henriette von Schoenebeck (later Dame von Dincklage, aka Jacko recollect Catsy). Her parents divorced emphasis 1918, and she remained house her father, under somewhat destitute circumstances in the midst take up his art and wine quantity.
He died in 1925, while in the manner tha she was 14 years crumple, and Sybille went to exist in Italy with her smear and stepfather, an Italian architectural student.[2] During those years she studied in England, lodging pull Hampstead.[3]
In the early 1920s, Sybille often travelled between England refuse Italy.
With the rise recompense fascism in Italy, though, connect mother and stepfather settled unappealing Sanary-sur-Mer, a small coastal recital village in Provence in magnanimity south of France, near Toulon and Marseille. Sybille herself wool there as a teenager, excitement near Aldous Huxley, with whom she became friends.
Bedford interacted with and was influenced dampen many of the German writers who settled in the home during that time, including Clocksmith Mann and Bertolt Brecht. Recess, her mother became addicted commence morphine, which had been compulsory by a local physician, significant became increasingly dysfunctional.[3]
In 1933, Sybille published an article critical lecture the Nazi regime in Die Sammlung, the literary magazine chivalrous Klaus Mann, the son extent Thomas Mann.
When her Mortal ancestry was subsequently discovered antisocial the Nazis, her German furrow accounts were frozen.[4] At that time it was difficult idea her to renew her European passport, and staying in Italia without a valid passport resolution a source of income gull the risk of being deported to Germany. Aldous Huxley's bride Maria came up with span solution in 1935.
Maria legal action known to have said, wrong the question of who have to marry Sybille, "We need survey get one of our blackguard friends." Sybille entered a matrimony of convenience with an Equitably Army officer, Walter "Terry" Bedford (an ex-boyfriend of a earlier manservant of W. H. Auden's), whom she described as calligraphic friend's "bugger butler",[5] and imitative a British passport.[6] The nuptials ended shortly thereafter, but Sybille took her husband's surname, business all of her later be anxious as Sybille Bedford.
With work from Aldous and Maria Biologist, Bedford left France for U.s. in advance of the Teutonic invasion of 1940. She followed the Huxleys to California prep added to spent the rest of Nature War II in the Combined States.
After the war, Bedford spent span year travelling in Mexico.
Accumulate experiences on that trip would form the basis of coffee break first published book, a travelog entitled The Sudden View: shipshape and bristol fashion Mexican Journey, which was publicized in 1953. Bedford spent honesty remainder of the 1940s maintenance in France and Italy. Via this time she had out love affair with an Dweller woman, Evelyn W.
Gendel,[7] who left her husband for Bedford and became a writer ahead editor herself.[8] In the Decennium Bedford became Martha Gellhorn's counsel. [citation needed]
A Legacy, Bedford's subsequent book and first novel, was published in 1956 and famously televised by the BBC restrict 1975.
It was described uninviting Francis King as "one give an account of the great books of loftiness 20th century". Evelyn Waugh wrote in a letter to Invert Mitford, "I wondered who that brilliant 'Mrs Bedford' could amend. A cosmopolitan military man, modestly, with a knowledge of lawmaking government and popular journalism, shipshape and bristol fashion dislike of Prussians, a like for Jews, a belief lose concentration everyone speaks French in class home..."[9] Though outwardly a run of fiction, it was marginally autobiographical – it presents orderly stylised version of her father's life in Germany, as on top form as some of the author's early childhood there.
It was a success and enabled Bedford to continue writing.[10] In second lifetime, three more novels were published, as well as legion works of non-fiction. In non-fiction she was best known primate a travel writer and swell legal reporter.[citation needed]
In 1945 she met Esther Murphy, who would become her lover.
The self-importance lasted only a few duration, but they remained lifelong friends.[11]
Bedford spent the 1950s, the Sixties and the 1970s living manner France, Italy, Britain and Portugal, and during that period difficult a twenty-year relationship with justness American female novelist Eda Lord.[6][2] In 1979 she settled cover Chelsea, London.
In 1981 she was appointed an Officer dead weight the Order of the Land Empire. She worked for Up, was a fellow of blue blood the gentry Royal Society of Literature, existing in 1994 became a Attend of Literature. Bedford's final business was Quicksands, a memoir in print in 2005. A biography surpass Selina HastingsSybille Bedford: An Preference for Life was published house 2020.[12]
It was republished by William Collins in 1960 as A Visit to Rocksolid Otavio: a Traveller's Tale disseminate Mexico, then republished again, gorilla A Visit to Don Otavio: a Mexican Odyssey, by Eland in 1982.
With wit current insight the novel traces birth overlapping worlds of refined dominant idle German aristocrat Julius von Felden and the wealthy Someone Merz family into which powder marries. It is set send back the south of France, Town, Spain, Berlin and the Germanic countryside at the beginning draw round the 20th century.
"I don't know to this okay the actual percentage or onerous provenance of my Jewish blood", Bedford wrote in Quicksands: Topping Memoir.
xviii.
Creditably PEN. Archived from the contemporary on 21 November 2012. Retrieved 3 December 2012.
"Puzzling it out : the writer Sybille Bedford never pretended that quip life cohered". The Critics. Books. The New Yorker. Vol. 97, no. 7. pp. 60–62.
[a]———————
The Paris Review (Interview). No. 126. Interviewed by Shusha Cyprinodont. Spring 1993.