Ethel Edith Mannin was a popular British novelist and travel writer. She was born in London

London

London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

 into a family with an Irish

Irish people

The Irish people are an ethnic group who originate in Ireland, an island in northwestern Europe. Ireland has been populated for around 9,000 years , with the Irish people's earliest ancestors recorded having legends of being descended from groups such as the Nemedians, Fomorians, Fir Bolg, Tuatha...

 background.

Her writing career began in copy-writing and journalism. She became a prolific author, and also politically and socially concerned. She supported the Labour Party

Labour Party (UK)

The Labour Party is a centre-left democratic socialist party in the United Kingdom. It surpassed the Liberal Party in general elections during the early 1920s, forming minority governments under Ramsay MacDonald in 1924 and 1929-1931. The party was in a wartime coalition from 1940 to 1945, after...

 but became disillusioned in the 1930s. A visit in 1936 to the USSR left her unfavourable to communism

Communism

Communism is a social, political and economic ideology that aims at the establishment of a classless, moneyless, revolutionary and stateless socialist society structured upon common ownership of the means of production...

. According to R. F. Foster (W. B. Yeats: A Life II p.512) 'She was a member of the Independent Labour Party

Independent Labour Party

The Independent Labour Party was a socialist political party in Britain established in 1893. The ILP was affiliated to the Labour Party from 1906 to 1932, when it voted to leave...

, and her ideology in the 1930s tended to anarcho-syndicalism

Anarcho-syndicalism

Anarcho-syndicalism is a branch of anarchism which focuses on the labour movement. The word syndicalism comes from the French word syndicat which means trade union , from the Latin word syndicus which in turn comes from the Greek word σύνδικος which means caretaker of an issue...

 rather than hardline Communism, but she was emphatically and vociferously left-wing'. She came to support anarchism

Anarchism

Anarchism is generally defined as the political philosophy which holds the state to be undesirable, unnecessary, and harmful, or alternatively as opposing authority in the conduct of human relations...

, and wrote about the Russian-born, American anarchist Emma Goldman

Emma Goldman

Emma Goldman was an anarchist known for her political activism, writing and speeches. She played a pivotal role in the development of anarchist political philosophy in North America and Europe in the first half of the twentieth century....

, a colleague in the Solidaridad Internacional Antifascista at the time of the Spanish Civil War

Spanish Civil War

The Spanish Civil WarAlso known as The Crusade among Nationalists, the Fourth Carlist War among Carlists, and The Rebellion or Uprising among Republicans. was a major conflict fought in Spain from 17 July 1936 to 1 April 1939...

.

She married twice: in 1919, a short-lived relationship from which she gained one daughter, and in 1938 to Reginald Reynolds

Reginald Reynolds

Reginald Arthur Reynolds was a British left wing writer.A Quaker, he was General Secretary of the No More War Movement 1933-1937....

, a Quaker and go-between in India

India

India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...

 between Mahatma Gandhi

Mahatma Gandhi

Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi , pronounced . 2 October 1869 – 30 January 1948) was the pre-eminent political and ideological leader of India during the Indian independence movement...

 and the British authorities. In 1934-5 she was in an intense but problematic intellectual, emotional and physical relationship with W. B. Yeats, who was on the rebound from Margot Ruddock

Margot Ruddock

Marguerite Ruddock , who used the stage name Margot Collis, was an actress, poet and singer. She had a relationship with W. B. Yeats starting in 1934. Their correspondence was published as Ah, Sweet Dancer ....

 and about to fall for Dorothy Wellesley (a detailed account is in R. F. Foster's life of Yeats, concluding mainly that her emotional engagement was much less than his). She also had a well-publicised affair with Bertrand Russell

Bertrand Russell

Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell, OM, FRS was a British philosopher, logician, mathematician, historian, and social critic. At various points in his life he considered himself a liberal, a socialist, and a pacifist, but he also admitted that he had never been any of these things...

.

Autobiographies

• Confessions and Impressions (1930)
• Privileged Spectator (1939)
• Connemara Journal (1947)
• Brief Voices (1959)
• Young in the Twenties: A Chapter of Autobiography (1971)
• Sunset over Dartmoor: A Final Chapter of Autobiography (1977)

Other works

• Martha (1923)
• Hunger of the Sea (1924)
• Sounding Brass (1925)
• Three New Love Stories (1925) with Warwick Deeping
  Warwick Deeping
  Warwick Deeping was an English novelist.Warwick Deeping may also refer to:*HMT Warwick Deeping...
  
   and Gilbert Frankau
  Gilbert Frankau
  Gilbert Frankau was a popular British novelist. He was known also for verse including a number of verse novels, and short stories....
  
  
• Pilgrims (1927)
• Green Willows (1928)
• Crescendo, Being the Dark Odyssey of Gilbert Stroud (1929)
• Children of the Earth (1930)
• Ragged Banners (1931)
• Bruised Wings and Other Stories (1931)
• Green Figs (1931) stories
• The Tinsel Eden and Other Stories (1931)
• All Experience (1932)
• Linda Shawn (1932)
• Venetian Blinds (1933)
• Dryad (1933) stories
• Men Are Unwise (1934)
• Some Adventures With A School (1934) with Margaret Johnston
• Cactus (1935)
• Forever Wandering (1935)
• The Falconer's Voice (1935)
• South to Samarkand (1936)
• The Pure Flame (1936)
• Sounding Brass (1937)
• Women Also Dream (1937)
• Women and the Revolution (1938)
• Rose and Sylvie (1938)
• Darkness My Bride (1938)
• Rolling in the Dew (1940)
• Commonsense and Morality (1941)
• Red Rose: A Novel based on the Life of Emma Goldman
  Emma Goldman
  Emma Goldman was an anarchist known for her political activism, writing and speeches. She played a pivotal role in the development of anarchist political philosophy in North America and Europe in the first half of the twentieth century....
  
   (1941)
• Captain Moonlight (1942)
• The Blossoming Bough (1942)
• Castles in the Street (1942)
• Proud Heaven (1943)
• No More Mimosa (1943)
• Bread and Roses: An Utopian Survey and Blue-Print (1944)
• Comrade O Comrade, or, Low-Down on the Left (1945)
• Lucifer and the Child (1945)
• Selected Stories (1946)
• The Dark Forest (1946)
• Bavarian Story (1948)
• German Journey (1948)
• Late Have I Loved Thee (1948)
• Jungle Journey: 7000 Miles through India and Pakistan (1950)
• At Sundown the Tiger (1951)
• The Fields at Evening (1952)
• The Wild Swans and Other Tales Based on the Ancient Irish (1952)
• This Was a Man: Some Memories of Robert Mannin by His Daughter (1952)
• Lover under Another Name (1953)
• Moroccan Mosaic (1953)
• So Tiberius … (1954)
• Two Studies in Integrity: Gerald Griffin and the Rev. Francis Mahony ('Father Prout') (1954)
• Land of the Crested Lion: A Journey through Modern Burma (1955)
• The Living Lotus (1956)
• Pity the Innocent (1957)
• The Country of the Sea: Some Wanderings in Brittany (1957)
• Fragrance of Hyacinths (1958)
• Ann and Peter in Sweden (1959)
• The Blue-eyed Boy (1959)
• Ann and Peter in Japan (1960)
• The Flowery Sword: Travels in Japan (1960)
• Sabisha (1961)
• Ann and Peter in Austria (1962)
• Curfew at Dawn (1962)
• With Will Adams Through Japan (1962)
• A Lance for the Arabs: A Middle East Journey (1963)
• The Road to Beersheba
  Beersheba
  Beersheba is the largest city in the Negev desert of southern Israel. Often referred to as the "Capital of the Negev", it is the seventh-largest city in Israel with a population of 194,300....
  
   (Hutchinson
  Hutchinson (publisher)
  Hutchinson & Co. was an English book publisher, founded in 1887. The company merged with Century Publishing in 1985 to form Century Hutchinson, and was folded into the British Random House Group in 1989, where it remains as an imprint in the Cornerstone Publishing division...
  
  , 1963).
• Aspects of Egypt: Some Travels in the United Arab Republic (1964)
• Rebels' Ride. A Consideration of the Revolt of the Individual (1964)
• Lovely Land: The Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan (1965)
• The Burning Bush (1965)
• Loneliness: A Study of the Human Condition (1966)
• The Night and Its Homing (1966)
• The Lady and the Mystic (1967)
• An American Journey (1967)
• Bitter Babylon (1968)
• England for a Change (1968)
• The Saga of Sammy-Cat (1969)
• Practitioners of Love. Some Aspects of the Human Phenomenon (1969)
• The Midnight Street (1969)
• England at Large (1970)
• Free Pass to Nowhere (1970)
• My Cat Sammy (1971)
• England My Adventure (1972)
• The Curious Adventure of Major Fosdick (1972)
• Mission to Beirut (1973)
• Stories from My Life (1973)
• An Italian Journey (1974)
• Kildoon (1974)
• The Late Miss Guthrie (1976)

Trivia

From 1952 until her death in 1984 Mannin was chairwoman of Shrewsbury Town F.C.

Shrewsbury Town F.C.

Shrewsbury Town Football Club is an English Association football club based in Shrewsbury, Shropshire, who play in League Two, the fourth tier of English football. The club was formed in 1886 and has played in all the bottom three divisions in various guises since being elected into the Football...

 One of her dying wishes was that her ashes be strewn on Gay Meadow

Gay Meadow

The Gay Meadow is the former home ground of Shrewsbury Town FC, a football club in England. It was situated just outside the town centre of Shrewsbury, on the banks of the River Severn and it opened in August 1910....

. This wish went unfulfilled for health and safety reasons.

External links

• Ethel Mannin page Stan Iverson Archives
• British Authors of the Turn of the 20th Century