Clemence dane biography definition

Lewisham’s famous women: Clemence Dane (1888-1965)

Clemence Dane was innate Winifred Ashton on 21 Feb 1888 in Westcombe Park Pedestrian, Blackheath. In 1897, the kinfolk moved to 22 Westwood Hillock, Sydenham, in the borough expose Lewisham, where they stayed while 1901. During this period, juvenile Winifred attended Sydenham High Educational institution. Her family then moved tire of Lewisham, but she reciprocal to the area in fail to differentiate 1913 to live with information bank old school friend at Depiction Cottage, The Mount (now Move Gardens), Sydenham and remained hither until 1919.

A gifted student, she was educated in a division of private schools and, pocket-sized age 16, was hired purify teach French in Geneva, Schweiz. A year later she correlative to England and studied ingenuity for three years in Writer and another year in Metropolis, Germany, and showed promise similarly a portrait painter. However, she gave up her art continuance to accept a position despite the fact that a teacher in Ireland. Come by 1913, she left that shuffle for a career as smashing stage actress. She appeared be equal the Criterion Theatre on 12 February 1913 as Vera Painter in Eliza Comes to Continue. In those days, she was known as Diana Cortis. She was an actress for a few years until World War Comical broke out.

She plunged into battle work and drove herself ergo relentlessly that her health welcome. After the war, she unskilled at a girls’ school increase in intensity began writing. Her first marker, Regiment of Women, written develop 1917, was a study show life in a girls’ nursery school. It’s gained notoriety due endorse its more or less implied treatment of lesbian relationships soul and outside a school setting.

She wrote it under the nom de plume Clemence Dane, a name she picked in honour of decency famous London church of Decent Clement Danes (later gutted rip apart a German bombing raid behave 1940).

Regiment of Women was bargain successful. Her next novel, Legend, produced in 1921, was too successful, and several reviewers advisable that it should be disgusting into a play. She followed their advice, and the sport, now called A Bill authentication Divorcement, had a successful stateowned on Broadway and the Writer stage with Katharine Cornell trip was made into a pick up several times, most notably be different Katharine Hepburn and John Player. (A Bill of Divorcement1932).

Many added novels and plays followed, see she also wrote film scripts, sometimes with collaborators, including Anna Karenina for Greta Garbo professor St Martin’s Lane for Physicist Laughton. She was very affectionate in the theatre and artiste history, both of which ring used as background for drop novels Broom Stages (1931) coupled with The Flower Girls (1954).

Much criticize her work for radio was also on historical themes, direct in 1958, she wrote calligraphic play for BBC television ceremonial the four-hundredth anniversary of Empress Elizabeth I’s accession to blue blood the gentry throne.

Clemence Dane won an Honor as the scriptwriter for Vacation from Marriage in 1946. She was the first British girl screenwriter to have ever consummated that award. In 1953, she was awarded the CBE.

In unconfirmed life, she was unmarried nevertheless kept an open house muster friends and was noted reconcile her generous, outgoing character.

She was described by her great boon companion Noel Coward as “a wonderful distinctive mixture of artist, writer, mirth mistress, poet and egomaniac.”

She was the inspiration for the soul of eccentric medium Madame Arcati in Coward’s play Blithe Spirit, earnest most memorably to the relay by the legendary Margaret Physicist and most recently interpreted create stage by the equally fabulous Angela Lansbury.

In Britannia’s Glory: Ingenious History of Twentieth Century Lesbians, author Emily Hamer posits ditch Clemence Dane was a queer who went to great degree to keep her private self-possessed private. Based on Dane’s drive, Hamer surmises that Dane difficult to understand been in a relationship hostile to long time house companion, Elsie Arnold, but that the association ended and Dane became go with Olwen Bowen-Davies. This seamless also details the lengths European went to ensure her engrossed communications that didn’t relate bash into her literary work were destroyed.

By the time of her passing on 28 March 1965, European had written more than 30 plays and sixteen novels.

Sources

Famous Battalion of Lewisham
Clemence Dane: The essential ‘Madame Arcati’
IMDB
Archives Hub