Rosalind Murray | |
|---|---|
| Born | 1890 (1890) |
| Died | 1967 (aged 76–77) |
| Known for | The Happy Tree The Leading Note |
| Spouse | |
| Children | 3, includingPhilip |
| Father | Gilbert Murray |
| Relatives | George Howard (maternal grandfather) Basil Murray (brother) |
Rosalind Murray (1890–1967) was a British-born writer and novelist known forThe Happy Tree andThe Leading Note.
Murray's parents were the classical scholarGilbert MurrayOM (1866–1957) and Lady Mary Henrietta Howard (1865–1956), daughter ofGeorge Howard, 9th Earl of Carlisle. She was one of five children, and had three brothers,Basil Murray, Denis and Stephen, and one sister, Agnes Elizabeth.[1]
During her childhood, Rosalind spent time abroad in Italy for the purposes of her health, as letters written by her father reveal: he wrote to David Murray in 1899 that she was "absolutely forbidden to live in Glasgow or anywhere near."[2] When she was three years old her father wrote to her grandmother, "It is a great help she is so intelligent",[3] and he supported her literary activity from an early age.
Her first novel,The Leading Note, was published before she turned twenty, in 1910.E.M. Forster wrote of it toMalcolm Darling in 1911, "The best novels I have come across in the past year are Rosalind Murray'sThe Leading Note [...] andWedgwood'sShadow of a Titan."[4] This was followed byMoonseed (1911),Unstable Ways (1914),The Happy Tree (1926, republished in 2014 byPersephone Books) andHard Liberty (1929), as well asThe Greeks (1931), a history book for children with a preface written by her father.[5]
Rosalind married historianArnold J. Toynbee (1889–1975) in 1913. They had three sons together: Antony, Lawrence andPhilip Toynbee. Lawrence (born 1920) married Jean Constance Asquith, grand-daughter of Prime MinisterH. H. Asquith.[6] Rosalind and Arnold divorced in 1946.[7]
In 1933, Rosalind converted to Catholicism which saw the beginning of her religious writing, includingThe Good Pagan's Failure (1939),Time and the Timeless (1942),The Life of Faith (1943),The Forsaken Fountain (1948) andThe Further Journey: In My End Is My Beginning (1953).[8]
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