Phyllis Bottome

Short Biography

PHYLLIS BOTTOME (1884-1963)(married name Forbes-Dennis)Though a successful writer for several decades, Bottome descended into obscurity after her death. Her best-known novels are probably Old Wine (1926), which portrays post-World War I Austria, Private Worlds (1934), a tale of mental illness made into a movie starring Claudette Colbert and Charles Boyer, and The Mortal Storm (1937), a bestseller about the rise of the Nazis. I came to her as a result of Elizabeth Maslen's discussion of women writers of World War II, in which London Pride (1941) and Within the Cup (1943—published in the U.S. as Survival) are discussed. Both novels deal with the Blitz; the latter is still on my "to read" list, but the former was an enjoyable portrayal of the Blitz through the eyes of a working class family, particularly the young son and a neighbor girl he befriends. Although sometimes veering towards sentimentality, Bottome doesn't shy away from the realities of war—the children in London Pride gleefully loot bombed-out houses, and the boy's mother wrestles believably with the issues of evacuation of children and the conflicting roles of women in the war effort. Most of Bottome’s fiction has a vivid awareness of social issues, and her interest in psychology comes through in interesting ways. Other novels include The Kingfisher (1922), Tatter'd Loving (1929), Level Crossing (1936), The Lifeline (1946), and Against Whom? (1954). She also published three volumes of memoir, Search for a Soul: Fragment of an Autobiography (1947), The Challenge (1952), and The Goal (1962).