No End to Snowdrops A Biography Of Kathleen Raine

This authorised biography of the poet Kathleen Raine tells the story of how she developed from a small girl, who knew at the age of eight that she wanted only to write poetry, into a world-renowned poet and literary scholar. Philippa Bernard follows Kathleen Raine's struggle against the constrictions of her suburban childhood to her exciting days at Girton College in the twenties, where she became friends with many brilliant writers, artists and scientists, including William Empson, Julian Trevelyan, Jakob Bronowski and the film maker Humphrey Jennings, friendships which lasted all her life. After a short marriage to Hugh Sykes Davies, she eloped with the poet Charles Madge to live in Blackheath where two children were born. An affair led to a break with Charles, who was involved at the time with Inez Spender, wife of the poet Stephen, and at the outbreak of war in 1939, she ran away with her children to the Lake District to the home of Michael Roberts and his wife Janet Adam Smith. Taking a cottage near Ullswater, she found a peaceful seclusion which enabled her to write some of her finest poetry, but found it difficult to support her family. Leaving the children with her friend, the art patron Helen Sutherland, she moved to London. In a room off the Tottenham Court Road, she came to know Sonia Brownell (later to marry George Orwell) who introduced her to the artists and writers of the Fitzrovia set, Dylan Thomas, Cyril Connolly and Rex Whistler among them, and including the strange figure of Tambi - James Tambimuttu - who published her first book of poems, Stone and Flower. Kathleen had already achieved much critical acclaim and published several volumes of poetry when she met through Tambi the naturalist and explorer Gavin Maxwell.