Pamela Hansford Johnson
Subtitle Her Life, Work and Times
By Wendy Pollard
Published by
Shepheard-Walwyn (Publishers) Ltd
ISBN 9780856832987
Category Biography
Winter 2014
Synopsis
This first biography of Pamela Hansford Johnson (1912-1981) draws on previously unexamined diaries, letters and illuminates the eventful life of a poet, novelist, broadcaster and critic. Her private life was full of incident, the earliest being her youthful romance with Dylan Thomas. She married the novelist and scientist, C.P. Snow.
Author's Biography
Wendy Pollard worked for five years as editorial assistant on the Newsdesk of ITV News. She gained an honours degree from the Open University and a PhD from Cambridge, for a dissertation on the works of Rosamond Lehmann, published as Rosamond Lehmann and Her Critics: The Vagaries of Literary Reception.
Reviews
'The first-ever biography of Pamela Hansford Johnson reveals fascinating detail about Cambridge University in the 50s and 60s, where her husband was a controversial figure.'
Cambridge Evening News
‘She was Dylan Thomas’ first love and would go on to become an accomplished novelist, playwright, poet and critic.’ Wales Online
Price £25.00
Reader Comments
This is a beautifully written and very accessible biography. It has encouraged me to delve further into the writings of PHJ.
Fascinating, well researched biography very hard to put down.
Could not put it down.....
A very interesting and thoroughly enjoyable biography
I was initially interested in Pamela Hansford Johnson as the wife of C P Snow but little did I know what a fascinating person she was in her own right. Wendy Pollard's excellently written biography brings Pamela, her work and views to life within the political and cultural context of a formative time for modern Britain. Apart from everything else, it is great fun to read.
Well written and totally accessible, she has clearly thoroughly researched her subject and enjoyed the material provided by close family of PHJ.
Well-written scholarly work including a lot of original source material.
An excellently written, beautifully drawn biography of Pamela Hansford Johnson, Wendy Pollard has certainly researched this wonderful writer well. This book will remind PHJ's admirers of what a great writer she was and bring her new readership too.
This is the first biography of PHJ and a definitive study of her life
and work, based on impeccable sources.
The Author has chosen a truly fasinating subject to delight it's reader, smypathetically structuredto to ensure the greatest value of interest and enjoyment
This book belongs in any ones collections and it's reader will enjoy many hours of literature relaxation
In my view it is the best and one I shall continue to read again and again
This is a delightful book and, reading it, one is immediately transported into the magical land of one's youth. Wendy Pollard has written a penetrating study of a very likeable and erudite woman. The book may be large but one races through it and, on one level, it is great fun and could even be called Pamela Hansford Johnson: What Pamela Did Next.
Just a superbly researched volume based on diaries never before scrutinised by other biographers.
Sheds new light on many important people and celebrities from the nineteen-thirties through to the nineteen-seventies as well as an in-depth revelation of Pamela Hansford Johnson's Life, Work & Times