Marghanita Laski
Encyclopedia
Marghanita Laski was an English
journalist
, radio
panellist and novelist: she also wrote literary biography, plays and short stories.
, England
, to a prominent family of Jewish intellectuals (Neville Laski
was her father, Moses Gaster
her grandfather and Harold Laski
her uncle), she was educated at Lady Barn House School
and St Paul's Girls' School
in Hammersmith
, worked in fashion, then studied English at Somerville College, Oxford
She married publisher John Howard (in Paris
), and worked in journalism.
Marghanita Laski lived in Hampstead
and Abbots Langley
.
and by 1986 had "carded" around 250,000 quotations. In the 1960s, Laski was the science fiction critic for The Observer
. Elected Vice Chairwoman of the Arts Council
in 1982, she served as Chairwoman of its Literature Panel between 1980 and 1984.
panel show What's My Line? (that ran from 1951 to 1963), The Brains Trust
(late 1950s), and Any Questions?
(1960s).
. Her play, The Offshore Island, is about nuclear warfare
.
described her novella The Victorian Chaise Longue as "an admirably written book, highly skilled in its economic evocation of time, place and character -- and a relentlessly terrifying one."
reprinted
The Victorian Chaise-longue
in 1999,
Little Boy Lost
in 2001,
The Village in 2004 and
To Bed with Grand Music in 2009.
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
journalist
Journalist
A journalist collects and distributes news and other information. A journalist's work is referred to as journalism.A reporter is a type of journalist who researchs, writes, and reports on information to be presented in mass media, including print media , electronic media , and digital media A...
, radio
Radio
Radio is the transmission of signals through free space by modulation of electromagnetic waves with frequencies below those of visible light. Electromagnetic radiation travels by means of oscillating electromagnetic fields that pass through the air and the vacuum of space...
panellist and novelist: she also wrote literary biography, plays and short stories.
Personal life
Marghanita was born in ManchesterManchester
Manchester is a city and metropolitan borough in Greater Manchester, England. According to the Office for National Statistics, the 2010 mid-year population estimate for Manchester was 498,800. Manchester lies within one of the UK's largest metropolitan areas, the metropolitan county of Greater...
, England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
, to a prominent family of Jewish intellectuals (Neville Laski
Neville Laski
Neville Jonas Laski, QC was an English judge and leader of Anglo-Jewry.- Family :He came from a distinguished family. His younger brother was Harold Laski...
was her father, Moses Gaster
Moses Gaster
Moses Gaster was a Romanian-born Jewish-British scholar, the Hakham of the Spanish and Portuguese congregation, London, and a Hebrew linguist. He was also the son-in-law of Michael Friedländer, principal of Jews' College. The surname Gaster is taken from Spanish Castro, indicating his Sephardic...
her grandfather and Harold Laski
Harold Laski
Harold Joseph Laski was a British Marxist, political theorist, economist, author, and lecturer, who served as the chairman of the Labour Party during 1945-1946, and was a professor at the LSE from 1926 to 1950....
her uncle), she was educated at Lady Barn House School
Lady Barn House School
Lady Barn House School is an independent primary school on Schools Hill in Cheadle, Greater Manchester, . It was originally in Fallowfield, Manchester, but moved to its present location in the 1950s. It was founded in 1873 by W. H...
and St Paul's Girls' School
St Paul's Girls' School
St Paul's Girls' School is a senior independent school, located in Brook Green, Hammersmith, in West London, England.-History:In 1904 a new day school for girls was established by the trustees of the Dean Colet Foundation , which had run St Paul's School for boys since the sixteenth century...
in Hammersmith
Hammersmith
Hammersmith is an urban centre in the London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham in west London, England, in the United Kingdom, approximately five miles west of Charing Cross on the north bank of the River Thames...
, worked in fashion, then studied English at Somerville College, Oxford
Somerville College, Oxford
Somerville College is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in England, and was one of the first women's colleges to be founded there...
She married publisher John Howard (in Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
), and worked in journalism.
Marghanita Laski lived in Hampstead
Hampstead
Hampstead is an area of London, England, north-west of Charing Cross. Part of the London Borough of Camden in Inner London, it is known for its intellectual, liberal, artistic, musical and literary associations and for Hampstead Heath, a large, hilly expanse of parkland...
and Abbots Langley
Abbots Langley
Abbots Langley is a large village and civil parish in the English county of Hertfordshire. It is an old settlement and is mentioned in the Domesday Book. Economically the village is closely linked to Watford and was formerly part of the Watford Rural District...
.
Career
After her son and daughter were born, Laski began writing in earnest: Marghanita was an omnivorous reader, from 1958 onwards she became a prolific and compulsive contributor to the Oxford English DictionaryOxford English Dictionary
The Oxford English Dictionary , published by the Oxford University Press, is the self-styled premier dictionary of the English language. Two fully bound print editions of the OED have been published under its current name, in 1928 and 1989. The first edition was published in twelve volumes , and...
and by 1986 had "carded" around 250,000 quotations. In the 1960s, Laski was the science fiction critic for The Observer
The Observer
The Observer is a British newspaper, published on Sundays. In the same place on the political spectrum as its daily sister paper The Guardian, which acquired it in 1993, it takes a liberal or social democratic line on most issues. It is the world's oldest Sunday newspaper.-Origins:The first issue,...
. Elected Vice Chairwoman of the Arts Council
Arts Council of Great Britain
The Arts Council of Great Britain was a non-departmental public body dedicated to the promotion of the fine arts in Great Britain. The Arts Council of Great Britain was divided in 1994 to form the Arts Council of England , the Scottish Arts Council, and the Arts Council of Wales...
in 1982, she served as Chairwoman of its Literature Panel between 1980 and 1984.
Broadcasting
Laski was a panellist on the popular UK BBCBBC
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...
panel show What's My Line? (that ran from 1951 to 1963), The Brains Trust
The Brains Trust
The Brains Trust was a popular informational BBC radio and later television programme in the United Kingdom during the 1940s and 50s.- History :...
(late 1950s), and Any Questions?
Any Questions?
Any Questions? is a topical debate radio programme in the United Kingdom.-Format:It is broadcast by BBC Radio 4 on Friday evenings and repeated on Saturday afternoons, when it is followed by a phone-in response programme, Any Answers?, previously a postal response slot...
(1960s).
Religious views
An avowed atheist, she was also a keen supporter of the Campaign for Nuclear DisarmamentCampaign for Nuclear Disarmament
The Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament is an anti-nuclear organisation that advocates unilateral nuclear disarmament by the United Kingdom, international nuclear disarmament and tighter international arms regulation through agreements such as the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty...
. Her play, The Offshore Island, is about nuclear warfare
Nuclear warfare
Nuclear warfare, or atomic warfare, is a military conflict or political strategy in which nuclear weaponry is detonated on an opponent. Compared to conventional warfare, nuclear warfare can be vastly more destructive in range and extent of damage...
.
Critical reception
Anthony BoucherAnthony Boucher
Anthony Boucher was an American science fiction editor and author of mystery novels and short stories. He was particularly influential as an editor. Between 1942 and 1947 he acted as reviewer of mostly mystery fiction for the San Francisco Chronicle...
described her novella The Victorian Chaise Longue as "an admirably written book, highly skilled in its economic evocation of time, place and character -- and a relentlessly terrifying one."
Works
- Love on the Supertax (1944) novel
- Stories of Adventure (1946) (editor?)
- The Patchwork Book (1946) editor
- Victorian Tales for Girls (1947) editor
- Tory Heaven or Thunder on the Right (1948) current affairs
- Little Boy LostLittle Boy Lost (novel)Little Boy Lost is a dramatic novel by Marghanita Laski that was published in 1949. It was then republished in 2001 by Persephone Books.-Film, TV or theatrical adaptations:...
(1949) novel - Toasted English (1949)
- Mrs Ewing, Mrs Molesworth and Mrs Hodgson BurnettFrances Hodgson BurnettFrances Eliza Hodgson Burnett was an English playwright and author. She is best known for her children's stories, in particular The Secret Garden , A Little Princess, and Little Lord Fauntleroy.Born Frances Eliza Hodgson, she lived in Cheetham Hill, Manchester...
(1950) biography - The Village (1952) novel
- The Victorian Chaise-longueThe Victorian Chaise-LongueThe Victorian Chaise-Longue is a novella by the English novelist Marghanita Laski. Published in 1953, the book describes the experience of an invalided young woman who wakes up in the body of her alter-ego eighty years previously...
(1953) novel - Apologies (1955) caricature
- The Offshore Island (1959) play
- Ecstasy: a Study of Some Secular and Religious Experiences (1961) psychology
- A Chaplet for Charlotte Yonge (1965) editor with Georgina BattiscombeGeorgina BattiscombeGeorgina Battiscombe was a British biographer, specialising mainly in lives from the Victorian era....
- Jane AustenJane AustenJane Austen was an English novelist whose works of romantic fiction, set among the landed gentry, earned her a place as one of the most widely read writers in English literature, her realism and biting social commentary cementing her historical importance among scholars and critics.Austen lived...
and Her World (1969) literary history - God and Man (1971) with Metropolitan Anthony (Bloom) of SourozhMetropolitan Anthony (Bloom) of SourozhAntony of Sourozh was best known as a writer and broadcaster on prayer and the Christian life. He was a monk and Metropolitan bishop of the Russian Orthodox Church...
religion - George EliotGeorge EliotMary Anne Evans , better known by her pen name George Eliot, was an English novelist, journalist and translator, and one of the leading writers of the Victorian era...
and Her World (1973) literary history - Kipling's English History (1974) Rudyard Kipling poems, editor
- Everyday Ecstasy (1980) psychology
- Ferry, the Jerusalem Cat (1983) story
- From Palm to Pine: Rudyard KiplingRudyard KiplingJoseph Rudyard Kipling was an English poet, short-story writer, and novelist chiefly remembered for his celebration of British imperialism, tales and poems of British soldiers in India, and his tales for children. Kipling received the 1907 Nobel Prize for Literature...
Abroad and at Home (1987) biography - Common Ground: an Anthology (1989) editor
- To Bed with Grand Music (2001) (posthumous)
Republished By Persephone Books
Persephone BooksPersephone Books
Persephone Books is an independent publisher based in Bloomsbury, London. Founded in 1999 by Nicola Beauman, Persephone has a catalogue of 93 "neglected novels, diaries, poetry, short stories, non-fiction, biography and cookery books, mostly by women and mostly dating from the early to...
reprinted
The Victorian Chaise-longue
The Victorian Chaise-Longue
The Victorian Chaise-Longue is a novella by the English novelist Marghanita Laski. Published in 1953, the book describes the experience of an invalided young woman who wakes up in the body of her alter-ego eighty years previously...
in 1999,
Little Boy Lost
Little Boy Lost (novel)
Little Boy Lost is a dramatic novel by Marghanita Laski that was published in 1949. It was then republished in 2001 by Persephone Books.-Film, TV or theatrical adaptations:...
in 2001,
The Village in 2004 and
To Bed with Grand Music in 2009.