Barbara Comyns Carr
Encyclopedia
Early life
Barbara Irene Veronica Bayley was born in the Warwickshire village of Bidford-on-AvonBidford-on-Avon
Bidford-on-Avon is a large village and civil parish in the English county of Warwickshire. In the 2001 census it had a population of 4,830.-Location:...
in 1907. She was one of six children and the family home was Bell Court on the banks of the River Avon
River Avon, Warwickshire
The River Avon or Avon is a river in or adjoining the counties of Leicestershire, Northamptonshire, Warwickshire, Worcestershire and Gloucestershire in the Midlands of England...
. Barbara later recorded her childhood in her novel Sisters by a River.
Marriage to John Pemberton
After attending an art school in nearby Stratford-upon-AvonStratford-upon-Avon
Stratford-upon-Avon is a market town and civil parish in south Warwickshire, England. It lies on the River Avon, south east of Birmingham and south west of Warwick. It is the largest and most populous town of the District of Stratford-on-Avon, which uses the term "on" to indicate that it covers...
, Barbara moved to London to attend Heatherley School of Fine Art
Heatherley School of Fine Art
The Heatherley School of Fine Art was named after Thomas Heatherley who took over as principal from James Mathews Leigh . Founded in 1845, the school is affectionately known as Heatherley's...
. In 1931 she married fellow artist and Warwickshire native John Pemberton, who was the nephew of the London Group
London Group
The London Group is an artists' exhibiting society based in London, England, founded in 1913, when the Camden Town Group came together with the English Vorticists and other independent artists to challenge the domination of the Royal Academy, which had become unadventurous and conservative....
president and noted artist Rupert Lee
Rupert Lee
Rupert Lee was an English painter, sculptor and printmaker. He was one of the organisers of the London International Surrealist Exhibition in 1936....
. Barbara and John exhibited their work with the London Group
London Group
The London Group is an artists' exhibiting society based in London, England, founded in 1913, when the Camden Town Group came together with the English Vorticists and other independent artists to challenge the domination of the Royal Academy, which had become unadventurous and conservative....
of artists in 1934. Barbara mixed amongst the artistic community of London and she knew Dylan Thomas
Dylan Thomas
Dylan Marlais Thomas was a Welsh poet and writer, Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved 11 January 2008. who wrote exclusively in English. In addition to poetry, he wrote short stories and scripts for film and radio, which he often performed himself...
and Augustus John
Augustus John
Augustus Edwin John OM, RA, was a Welsh painter, draughtsman, and etcher. For a short time around 1910, he was an important exponent of Post-Impressionism in the United Kingdom....
. Barbara recorded a fictionalised version of her marriage to John, which was fraught with poverty and infidelity, in her novel Our Spoons Came From Woolworths. Barbara had two children during her marriage to John, but the marriage broke down in 1935.
During the late 1930s, Barbara began a relationship with the black marketeer Arthur Price. The couple lived with Barbara's two children at various London addresses. Barbara generated money by breeding poodles, renovating pianos, dealing in antiques and classic cars and drawing for commercial advertisements. Barbara wrote about her relationship and her commercial endeavours in her novel Mr. Fox. With the outbreak of World War II, Barbara's poverty increased and her relationship with Arthur broken down. Barbara became a cook in a Hertfordshire
Hertfordshire
Hertfordshire is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan county in the East region of England. The county town is Hertford.The county is one of the Home Counties and lies inland, bordered by Greater London , Buckinghamshire , Bedfordshire , Cambridgeshire and...
country house, where she and her children lived until the end of the war and where she began to write stories to entertain them.
Marriage to Richard Comyns Carr
In 1945 Barbara married Richard Strettell Comyns Carr (who was the son of the Barrister and liberal MP Arthur Strettell Comyns CarrArthur Strettell Comyns Carr
Arthur Strettell Comyns Carr was a British Liberal politician and lawyer.-Family and education:Comyns Carr was the son of J. Comyns Carr, a dramatist and art critic. His mother, Alice Laura Strettell was a novelist. He was born in Marylebone and educated at Winchester College and Trinity College,...
and the grandson of the dramatist Joseph Comyns Carr). Richard was a civil servant based in the foreign office and a friend and colleague of Kim Philby
Kim Philby
Harold Adrian Russell "Kim" Philby was a high-ranking member of British intelligence who worked as a spy for and later defected to the Soviet Union...
. It was on her second honeymoon that Barbara conceived the idea for her most acclaimed novel The Vet's Daughter
The Vet's Daughter
The Vet's Daughter is a 1959 novel by English author Barbara Comyns Carr.- The subject of the novel :The Vet's Daughter is the fictional tale of Alice Rowlands, the daughter of a South London veterinarian in the Edwardian era. Alice's father is a bully who rules their repressed house through terror...
. The couple lived in London where Barbara began to write professionally.
Barbara's first novel was Sisters by a River which was serialised in Lilliput
Lilliput
Lilliput has several meanings:* Lilliput and Blefuscu, two island nations in Jonathan Swift's novel Gulliver's Travels* The genus of jumping spiders of this name was renamed to Tanzania in 2008...
under the title "The Novel Nobody Will Publish" before finally being published by Eyre and Spottiswode in 1947. This was followed by the publication of Our Spoons Came from Woolworths in 1950.
In the 1950s the Comyns Carrs moved to Spain and lived briefly on Ibiza
Ibiza
Ibiza or Eivissa is a Spanish island in the Mediterranean Sea 79 km off the coast of the city of Valencia in Spain. It is the third largest of the Balearic Islands, an autonomous community of Spain. With Formentera, it is one of the two Pine Islands or Pityuses. Its largest cities are Ibiza...
and then in Barcelona
Barcelona
Barcelona is the second largest city in Spain after Madrid, and the capital of Catalonia, with a population of 1,621,537 within its administrative limits on a land area of...
. Barbara wrote about their experience in Ibiza in her novel Out of the Red and into the Blue. After living in Barcelona for 16 years, they moved to San Roque
San Roque
San Roque may refer to:Places* San Roque, Antioquia, a place in Colombia* San Roque, Cádiz, a place in Spain* San Roque, California, a residential neighborhood in Santa Barbara, California in the United States...
in Andalusia
Andalusia
Andalusia is the most populous and the second largest in area of the autonomous communities of Spain. The Andalusian autonomous community is officially recognised as a nationality of Spain. The territory is divided into eight provinces: Huelva, Seville, Cádiz, Córdoba, Málaga, Jaén, Granada and...
. The couple returned to England in 1973. Barbara published 11 novels in total, most of which were published by Virago
Virago Press
Virago is a British publishing company founded in 1973 by Carmen Callil to publish books by women writers. Both new works and reissued books by neglected authors have featured on the imprint's list....
. Graham Greene
Graham Greene
Henry Graham Greene, OM, CH was an English author, playwright and literary critic. His works explore the ambivalent moral and political issues of the modern world...
and Alan Hollinghurst
Alan Hollinghurst
Alan Hollinghurst is a British novelist, and winner of the 2004 Man Booker Prize for The Line of Beauty.-Biography:Hollinghurst was born on 26 May 1954 in Stroud, Gloucestershire, the only child of James Hollinghurst, a bank manager, and his wife, Elizabeth...
were early fans of her work and her novel The Vet's Daughter
The Vet's Daughter
The Vet's Daughter is a 1959 novel by English author Barbara Comyns Carr.- The subject of the novel :The Vet's Daughter is the fictional tale of Alice Rowlands, the daughter of a South London veterinarian in the Edwardian era. Alice's father is a bully who rules their repressed house through terror...
was serialied in BBC
BBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...
radio and adapted into the 1978 musical The Clapham Wonder by Sandy Wilson
Sandy Wilson
Sandy Wilson is an English composer and lyricist, best known for his musical The Boy Friend .-Biography:Wilson was born Alexander Galbraith Wilson in Sale, Greater Manchester, and was educated at Harrow School and Oriel College, Oxford. During the war he served in the Royal Ordnance Corps in Great...
.
Death
Barbara died in the Shropshire village of Stanton upon Hine Heath in 1992 and is buried there in St. Andrew's Churchyard. The GuardianThe Guardian
The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...
and The Independent
The Independent
The Independent is a British national morning newspaper published in London by Independent Print Limited, owned by Alexander Lebedev since 2010. It is nicknamed the Indy, while the Sunday edition, The Independent on Sunday, is the Sindy. Launched in 1986, it is one of the youngest UK national daily...
carried obituaries of her life.
Barbara Comyns Carr's published work
- Sisters by a River (1947)
- Our Spoons Came from Woolworths (1950)
- Who Was Changed and Who Was Dead (1955). In 2010 this novel was republished by the Dorothy Project press with an introduction by Brian EvensonBrian EvensonBrian Evenson is an American academic and writer of both literary fiction and popular fiction. He has received degrees from Brigham Young University and the University of Washington . After leaving a teaching position at BYU, he held positions at Oklahoma State University, Syracuse University...
and a cover illustrated by Yelena Bryksenkova. - The Vet's DaughterThe Vet's DaughterThe Vet's Daughter is a 1959 novel by English author Barbara Comyns Carr.- The subject of the novel :The Vet's Daughter is the fictional tale of Alice Rowlands, the daughter of a South London veterinarian in the Edwardian era. Alice's father is a bully who rules their repressed house through terror...
(1959) - Out of the Red and into the Blue (1960)
- The Skin Chairs (1962)
- Birds in Tiny Cages (1964)
- A Touch of Mistletoe (1967)
- The Juniper Tree (1985). In October 2011 this novel is to be republished by the Capuchin Classics press with a foreword by Margaret Drabble.
- Mr. Fox (1987)
- The House of Dolls (1989).