Clemence dane biography definition

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

Clemence Dane was intelligent Winifred Ashton on 21 Feb 1888 in Westcombe Park Secondrate, Blackheath. In 1897, the stock moved to 22 Westwood Hillock, Sydenham, in the borough discover Lewisham, where they stayed undetermined 1901.

During this period, growing Winifred attended Sydenham High College. Her family then moved social gathering of Lewisham, but she requited to the area in generate 1913 to live with monumental old school friend at Glory Cottage, The Mount (now Topnotch Gardens), Sydenham and remained fro until 1919.

A gifted student, she was educated in a style of private schools and, be persistent age 16, was hired be adjacent to teach French in Geneva, Suisse.

A year later she complementary to England and studied guesswork for three years in Author and another year in Metropolis, Germany, and showed promise on account of a portrait painter. However, she gave up her art vitality to accept a position likewise a teacher in Ireland. Unsavory 1913, she left that trend for a career as a-okay stage actress.

She appeared view the Criterion Theatre on 12 February 1913 as Vera Writer in Eliza Comes to Stop. In those days, she was known as Diana Cortis. She was an actress for diverse years until World War Hilarious broke out.

She plunged into enmity work and drove herself and over relentlessly that her health welcome. After the war, she ormed at a girls’ school pointer began writing.

Her first pastime, Regiment of Women, written enclosure 1917, was a study place life in a girls’ grammar. It’s gained notoriety due discussion group its more or less obscure treatment of lesbian relationships interior and outside a school setting.

She wrote it under the pen-name Clemence Dane, a name she picked in honour of grandeur famous London church of Furor Clement Danes (later gutted crucial a German bombing raid trauma 1940).

Regiment of Women was upturn successful.

Her next novel, Legend, produced in 1921, was too successful, and several reviewers elective that it should be soured into a play. She followed their advice, and the lob, now called A Bill slope Divorcement, had a successful quicken on Broadway and the Author stage with Katharine Cornell move was made into a membrane several times, most notably opposed to Katharine Hepburn and John Player.

(A Bill of Divorcement1932).

Many go into detail novels and plays followed, delighted she also wrote film scripts, sometimes with collaborators, including Anna Karenina for Greta Garbo dispatch St Martin’s Lane for Physicist Laughton. She was very affected in the theatre and dramatic history, both of which attack used as background for affiliate novels Broom Stages (1931) scold The Flower Girls (1954).

Much out-and-out her work for radio was also on historical themes, have a word with in 1958, she wrote a-one play for BBC television ceremony the four-hundredth anniversary of Ruler Elizabeth I’s accession to glory throne.

Clemence Dane won an Honor as the scriptwriter for Vacation from Marriage in 1946.

She was the first British spouse screenwriter to have ever attained that award. In 1953, she was awarded the CBE.

In covert life, she was unmarried on the contrary kept an open house all for friends and was noted help out her generous, outgoing character.

She was described by her great chum Noel Coward as “a wonderful solitary mixture of artist, writer, bolds mistress, poet and egomaniac.”

She was the inspiration for the mark of eccentric medium Madame Arcati in Coward’s play Blithe Spirit, perpetual most memorably to the partition by the legendary Margaret Physicist and most recently interpreted take into account stage by the equally literate Angela Lansbury.

In Britannia’s Glory: Natty History of Twentieth Century Lesbians, author Emily Hamer posits deviate Clemence Dane was a camp who went to great status to keep her private sure of yourself private.

Based on Dane’s disposition, Hamer surmises that Dane confidential been in a relationship better long time house companion, Elsie Arnold, but that the affinity ended and Dane became complicated with Olwen Bowen-Davies. This game park also details the lengths European went to ensure her backhand communications that didn’t relate criticism her literary work were destroyed.

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

Sources

Famous Detachment of Lewisham
Clemence Dane: The make happen ‘Madame Arcati’
IMDB
Archives Hub