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= Naomi_Mitchison =
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Introduction
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Naomi Mary Margaret Mitchison, Baroness Mitchison (; 1 November 1897
- 11 January 1999) was a Scottish novelist and poet. Often called a
doyenne of Scottish literature, she wrote more than 90 books of
historical and science fiction, travel writing and autobiography. Her
husband Dick Mitchison's life peerage in 1964 entitled her to call
herself Lady Mitchison, but she never did. Her 1931 work, 'The Corn
King and the Spring Queen', is seen by some as the prime 20th-century
historical novel.
Childhood, family background and early career
======================================================================
Naomi Mary Margaret Haldane was born in Edinburgh, the daughter and
younger child of the physiologist John Scott Haldane and his wife
(Louisa) Kathleen Trotter. Naomi's parents came from different
political backgrounds, her father being a Liberal and her mother from
a Conservative, pro-imperialist family. However, both were of landed
stock; the Haldane family had been feudal barons of Gleneagles since
the 13th century. Today the best-known member of the family is
probably Naomi's elder brother, the biologist J. B. S. Haldane
(1892-1964), but in her youth her paternal uncle Richard Burdon
Haldane, 1st Viscount Haldane, twice Lord Chancellor (from 1912 to
1915 under H. H. Asquith, and in 1924 during the first Labour
government of Ramsay MacDonald), was better known.
Naomi followed her brother to the Oxford Preparatory School (later
Dragon School) in 1904-1911, as the only girl there. From 1911, she
was tutored at home by a governess. She qualified for the University
of Oxford in 1914, via the Oxford higher local examination and entered
the Society of Oxford Home Students (later St Anne's College) to
pursue a degree course in science. However, she chose before
completing the course to become a nurse, as the First World War had
broken out. After a course in first aid and home nursing in 1915, she
joined a Voluntary Aid Detachment at St Thomas's Hospital, London. Her
service was much curtailed after she caught scarlet fever.
The Haldanes were known for their self-styled domestic experiments.
She and her brother John started investigating Mendelian genetics in
1908. They initially used guinea pigs as experimental models, but
changed to mice as they were more convenient to handle. Their findings
were published as "Reduplication in Mice" in 1915. This was in fact
the first demonstration of genetic linkage in mammals.
Literary career
======================================================================
Mitchison was a prolific writer of more than 90 books in her lifetime,
across a multitude of styles and genres. These include historical
novels such as her first novel 'The Conquered' (1923), set in Gaul in
the 1st century BCE, during the Gallic Wars of Julius Caesar, and her
second novel 'Cloud Cuckoo Land' (1925) set in 5th-century BCE Ancient
Greece during the Peloponnesian War. Her best work is thought to be
'The Corn King and the Spring Queen' (1931), which treats three
different societies, including a wholly fictional one, and explores
themes of sexuality that were daring in her day. Terri Windling called
it "a lost classic". Literary critic Geoffrey Sadler stated of
Mitchison's historical fiction: "On the basis of her early writings,
she is unquestionably one of the great historical novelists."
In 1932, Mitchison was commissioned by Victor Gollancz to edit a guide
to the modern world for children. Mitchison's book, 'An Outline for
Boys and Girls and Their Parents', included several distinguished
contributors, including W. H. Auden, Richard Hughes, Gerald Heard, and
Olaf Stapledon. On publication, 'An Outline' was praised by 'The Times
Literary Supplement', the 'New Statesman 'and the 'London Mercury'.
However, several clergymen, including the Archbishop of York, were
angered by the book's lack of emphasis on Christianity, while other
right-wing authors objected to a perceived sympathy with the Soviet
Union. The Conservative writer Arnold Lunn wrote a lengthy attack on
the book in the 'English Review', which contributed to its commercial
failure.
Undoubtedly her most controversial work, 'We Have Been Warned', was
published in 1935, based on a journey to the Soviet Union. In it she
explored sexual behaviour, including rape and abortion. The book was
rejected by various publishers and ultimately censored. She approached
first her friend Victor Gollancz, who flatly turned her down,
observing that "publication of the book would cause a real outcry."
The book was extensively rewritten to make it more acceptable to
publishers, and was still subject to censorship. On publication it was
universally despised for its depiction of rape, free love and abortion
that "alienated readers on the left and horrified those on the
political right." In 2005, files from the National Archives revealed
that the British government had considered prosecuting the publishers
of 'We Have Been Warned', but ultimately decided not to do so.
Mitchison was a compulsive writer, as her travelogues revealed. She
wrote on planes or in trains as prompted by the situation. For
example, she wrote up a visit to the US in the 1930s, objecting to
sharecropping.
Her 1938 book 'The Moral Basis of Politics' was a treatise on ethics
and politics that she had worked on for three years. In it she
defended the right of the left-wing journalist H. N. Brailsford to
criticise the Moscow Trials, which had caused controversy on the
British left at the time.
Mitchison's 'The Blood of the Martyrs' (1939) is set against the
background of Nero's persecution of the Christians. She draws
parallels between Nero and dictators of her own time, Mussolini and
Hitler.
In 1952, Mitchison went to Moscow as a member of the Authors' World
Peace Appeal. She frequently visited Africa, especially Botswana,
where she was made a sort of tribal mother ('Mmarona') to the baKgatla
people. 'Mucking Around' (1981) best describes her haphazard travels
in five continents over 50 years.
Her later works included further historical novels: 'The Bull Calves'
(1947) about the Jacobite rising of 1745 and 'The Young Alexander the
Great' (1960). She also turned to fantasy, such as 'Graeme and the
Dragon' (1954, Graeme Mitchison being a grandson through Denis),
science fiction such as 'Memoirs of a Spacewoman' (1962) and 'Solution
Three' (1975), fantasy such as the humorous Arthurian novel 'To the
Chapel Perilous' (1955), non-fiction such as 'African Heroes' (1968),
and also children's novels, poetry, travel and a three-volume
autobiography. She was unsure exactly how many books she had written,
often claiming there were about 70. The articles were uncountable,
from book reviews for the old 'Time and Tide' magazine and the 'New
Statesman' to practical essays on farming, campaigning articles,
recollections and reflections.
After her husband's death, Mitchison wrote several memoirs, published
as separate titles between 1973 and 1985. She was also a good friend
of the writer J. R. R. Tolkien, and one of the proof readers of 'The
Lord of the Rings'. Maxim Lieber served as her literary editor in
1935.
Activism
======================================================================
Mitchison, like her brother, was a committed socialist in the 1930s.
She visited the Soviet Union in 1932 as part of a Fabian Society group
and expressed some misgivings about the direction of Soviet society.
An active anti-fascist, Mitchison travelled to Austria, where she
undertook the risky task of smuggling documents and left-wing refugees
out of the country. She stood unsuccessfully as a Labour Party
candidate for the Scottish Universities in 1935, at a time when
universities were still allowed to elect MPs. Eventually, as her
political candidacy and her pro-Left writings had failed, she
gradually became disenchanted with the Left. At that time, she became
politically attracted to Scottish Nationalism and increasingly wrote
on specifically Scottish issues and themes. She supported the Scottish
National Party candidate, William Power in the parliamentary
by-election for the Argyllshire constituency in 1940. Later she became
active in the Scottish Convention launched by John MacCormick in 1943,
serving on its education committee. Her name was on George Orwell's
list of people, prepared in March 1949 for the Information Research
Department (IRD) set up at the Foreign Office by the Labour
government, who were considered to have pro-communist leanings and so
be inappropriate to write for the IRD.
Mitchison's advocacy continued in other ways. She was councillor for
the East Kintyre ward on Argyll County Council from 1945 to 1966. She
initiated the council's school picture scheme under which a fund was
established to purchase paintings by contemporary Scottish artists and
loan them to schools. The paintings acquired included works by Joan
Eardley, Robin Philipson, Anne Redpath and William MacTaggart. She
served on the Highland Panel in 1947-1965 and the Highlands and
Islands Development Consultative Council in 1966-1976. She became a
spokeswoman for the island communities of Scotland. She was a friend
of Seretse Khama and an advisor to the Bakgatla tribe of Botswana.
Meanwhile she was a serious botanist, gardener and practical farmer.
Mitchison corresponded with her aunt Elizabeth Haldane, a writer,
early suffragist and the first female Justice of the Peace in
Scotland, until her death in 1937. While Haldane accepted "the
restriction of women's activities to the inside, the personal, the
domestic" Mitchison considered this view outdated and they often
disagreed.
Mitchison was a vocal campaigner for women's rights, advocating birth
control, and was elected a Life Fellow of the Eugenics Society in 1925
before leaving in objection to the group's politics. Her own lack of
knowledge of birth control (as stated in her memoirs) led to an
interest in the causes of birth control and abortion. She was on the
founding council of North Kensington Women's Welfare Centre in London
in 1924. Today, she is best known for her advocacy of feminism and her
tackling of then-taboo subjects in her writing. She was a principal
investor in the Partisan Coffee House, a meeting place for the New
Left off Soho Square, which functioned in 1958-1962.
Mitchison was present and supporting a Stop the Seventy Tour rally,
aiming to halt the apartheid South African rugby and cricket tours of
Britain in December 1969.
Later life
======================================================================
Her husband Dick Mitchison predeceased her in 1970, but she remained
active as a writer well into her nineties. Mitchison was appointed
Commander of the Order of the British Empire in the 1985 New Year
Honours. In her old age she was anxious and depressed about the
future, particularly the misuse of scientific development such as
nuclear arms. She stated that to experience two world wars in a
lifetime was too much. On the other hand, she never exhausted the
Haldanes' eccentricity, and once remarked in her biography in 'Who's
Who' that her recreation was "burning rubbish".
When asked on her 90th birthday whether she had regrets in life, she
replied: "Yes, all the men I never slept with. Imagine!"
She died at Carradale on 11 January 1999 at the age of 101, and was
cremated at the Clydebank crematorium on 16 January. Her ashes were
then scattered there.
Honours and recognitions
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*Honorary doctorate from the University of Stirling, Scotland, in 1976
*Honorary LLD (Doctor of Law) from the University of Dundee, Scotland,
in 1985
*Honorary Doctorate from Heriot-Watt University in 1990
*DLitt from the University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, in 1983
*Elected Honorary Fellow of St Anne's College, Oxford, in 1980, and
Wolfson College in 1983
*CBE (Commander of the Order of the British Empire) in 1985
*James Watson (winner of 1962 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine)
wrote much of his book 'The Double Helix 'while staying with the
Mitchisons, and dedicated it to her.
Autobiography
===============
Mitchison's autobiography is in three parts:
*'Small Talk: Memoirs of an Edwardian Childhood' (1973; reprinted,
with an introductory essay by Ali Smith, Kennedy & Boyd, 2009)
*'All Change Here: Girlhood and Marriage' (1975) ['Small Talk' and
'All Change Here' were republished as a single volume 'As It Was: An
Autobiography 1897-1918' in 1975]
*
*'Mucking Around' (1981)
*'Among You Taking Notes. The Wartime Diary of Naomi Mitchison' (1986)
(Autobiographical sketches from Mitchison's diaries during the Second
World War, written for "Mass Observation", selected and edited by
Dorothy Sheridan.)
Novels
========
*[
http://www.historicalnovels.info/Conquered.html 'The Conquered']
(1923; reprinted, with an introduction by Isobel Murray, Kennedy &
Boyd, 2009)
*'Cloud Cuckoo Land' (1925; reprinted, with an introduction by Isobel
Murray, Kennedy & Boyd, 2011)
*'The Hostages' (1930)
*'The Corn King and the Spring Queen' (1931)
*'Boys and Girls and Gods' (1931)
*'The Price of Freedom' (1931)
*'Powers of Light' (1932)
*'The Delicate Fire' (1933; reprinted, with an introduction by Isobel
Murray, Kennedy & Boyd, 2012)
*'Beyond this Limit' (1935; 'Pictures by Wyndham Lewis and Words by
Naomi Mitchison')
*'We Have Been Warned' (1935; reprinted, with an introduction by
Isobel Murray, Kennedy & Boyd, 2012)
*'The Blood of the Martyrs' (1939; reprinted in 1989)
*'The Bull Calves' (1947; reprinted, with an introduction by Isobel
Murray, Kennedy & Boyd, 2013)
*'The Big House' (1950; reprinted, with an introduction by Moira
Burgess, Kennedy & Boyd, 2010)
*'Travel Light' (Faber and Faber, 1952; Virago Press, 1985; Penguin
Books, 1987; Small Beer Press, 2005; reprinted in the UK with 'The
Varangs' Saga', and an introduction by Isobel Murray, Kennedy &
Boyd, 2009)
*'Graeme and the Dragon' (1954
*'The Land the Ravens Found' (1955)
*'To the Chapel Perilous' (1955)
*'Little Boxes' (1956)
*'Behold Your King' (1957; reprinted, with an introduction by Moira
Burgess, Kennedy & Boyd, 2009)
*'Judy and Lakshmi' (London: Collins, 1959)
*'The Young Alexander the Great' (1960)
*'The Rib of the Green Umbrella' (London: Collins, 1960; illustrated
by Edward Ardizzone)
*'Memoirs of a Spacewoman' (1962; reprinted, with an introduction by
Isobel Murray, Kennedy & Boyd, 2011)
*'The Fairy who Couldn't Tell a Lie' (1963)
*'Ketse and the Chief' (1965)
*'When We Become Men' (1965; reprinted, with an introduction by Isobel
Murray, Kennedy & Boyd, 2009)
*'Friends and Enemies' (1966)
*'Big Surprise' (1967)
*'Family at Ditlabeng' (1969)
*'Don't Look Back' (1969)
*'The Far Harbour' (1969)
*'Sun and Moon' (1970)
*'Cleopatra's People' (1972; reprinted, with an introduction by Isobel
Murray, Kennedy & Boyd, 2010)
*'Sunrise Tomorrow: A Story of Botswana' (1973)
*'Danish Teapot' (1973)
*'Solution Three' (1975; reprinted with an afterword by Susan Squier,
Feminist Press, 1995)
*'Snake!' (1976)
*'Two Magicians' (with Dick Mitchison, 1979)
*'The Vegetable War' (1980)
*'Not by Bread Alone' (1983)
*'Early in Orcadia' (1987)
*'Images of Africa' (1987)
*'As It Was' (1988)
*'The Oath-takers' (1991)
*'Sea-green Ribbons' (1991)
*'The Dark Twin' (with Marion Campbell, 1998)
Collections
=============
*'When the Bough Breaks and Other Stories' (1924; reprinted by Pomona
Press, 2006)
*'The Laburnum Branch' (1926)
*'Black Sparta' (1928)
*'Barbarian Stories' (1929)
*'Beyond This Limit: Selected Shorter Fiction of Naomi Mitchison'
(1935; Scottish Academic Press, 1986; reprinted, with an introduction
by Isobel Murray, Kennedy & Boyd, 2008)
*'The Fourth Pig' (1936)
*'Five Men and a Swan' (1957)
*'The Brave Nurse: And Other Stories' (1977)
*'Cleansing of the Knife: And Other Poems' (poems) (1979)
*'Images of Africa' (1980)
*'What Do You Think Yourself: and Other Scottish Short Stories' (1982)
*'A Girl Must Live: Stories and Poems' (poems) (1990)
Plays
=======
*'Nix-Nought-Nothing: Four Plays for Children' (illustrated by
Winifred Bromhall, 1928)
*'The Price of Freedom. A play in three acts' (with Lewis Gielgud
Mitchison, 1931)
*'An End and a Beginning' (1937)
Non-fiction
=============
*'Anna Comnena' (1928; biography - reprinted, with an introduction by
Isobel Murray, Kennedy & Boyd, 2009)
*'Vienna Diary' (1934; reprinted by Kennedy & Boyd, 2009)
*'The Moral Basis of Politics' (1938; Reprinted 1971)
*
*'Return to the Fairy Hill' (1966)
*'African Heroes' (1968)
*'The Africans: From the Earliest Times to the Present' (1971)
*
*'Oil for the Highlands?' (1974)
*'Margaret Cole, 1893-1980' (1982)
*'Rising Public Voice: Women in Politics Worldwide' (1995)
*'Essays and Journalism. Volume 2: Carradale' (Kennedy & Boyd,
2009), edited and introduced by Moira Burgess
Marriage and family
======================================================================
On 11 February 1916, Naomi married the barrister Gilbert Richard
Mitchison (23 March 1894 - 14 February 1970), who was a close friend
of her brother. Mitchison was then on leave from the Western Front;
like her, he came from a well-connected and wealthy family. He became
a Queen's Counsel, then a Labour politician, and eventually (on 5
October 1964) a life peer as Baron Mitchison of Carradale in the
County of Argyll, on retirement for his political work. Naomi thus
became Lady Mitchison as the wife of a life peer, but she objected to
the title. She played an active part in her husband's political career
and in his constituency duties.
Dick and Naomi Mitchison's marriage was not wholly satisfactory. After
some years they both agreed to an open marriage, in which they entered
into several other relationships that were conducted with dignity and
described with humour. Her first serious lover was the Oxford
classicist Theodore Wade-Gery, whose scholarship she drew on in
writing her historical novels. As described in her autobiography, 'You
May Well Ask: A Memoir 1920-1940', she fell deeply in love with
Wade-Gery. She wrote him love poems and missed him greatly after he
broke off the relationship, considering it incompatible with his
marriage to another woman in 1928. She mitigated her sorrow by
undertaking a risky mission to help persecuted socialists in
fascist-dominated Austria. Later, she had several briefer, less
intense affairs, in which the men were in love with her and she did
her best to reciprocate. As she emphasized in describing these, she
took care to use contraceptives with her lovers and to let her
children be fathered by her husband alone - although she dreamed of a
future in which her daughters would be able to "have children by
several chosen fathers, uncensured".
Naomi and Dick had seven children. Their four sons were Geoffrey
(1918-1927), who died of meningitis, Denis (1919-2018), a professor of
bacteriology, Murdoch (1922-2011), and Avrion (1928-2022), both
professors of zoology. Their three daughters were Lois (born 1926),
Valentine (born 1928), and Clemency, who died in 1940, shortly after
her birth.
Between 1923 and 1939, they lived at Rivercourt House, Upper Mall,
Hammersmith, London. They bought the Carradale House at Carradale in
Kintyre in 1939, where they lived for the rest of their lives. The
house was frequented by people of all sorts: lords, ladies,
politicians, writers, neighbours, fishermen and farmers. She and Denis
MacIntosh, a local fisherman, wrote a documentary, 'Men and Herring: A
Documentary', in 1949. Ten years later, this was adapted for BBC
Television as a docudrama, 'Spindrift'.
Reviews
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*Fullerton, Ian (1980), review of 'Images of Africa', 'Cencrastus' No.
4, Winter 1980-1981, pp. 37 and 38,
Further reading
=================
*Smith, Donald (1983), 'You May Well Ask: Nine Decades of Mitchison',
Hearn, Sheila G. (ed.), 'Cencrastus' No. 13, Summer 1983, pp. 14-17,
* Smith, Donald (1983), 'Naomi Mitchison and Neil Gunn: A Highland
Friendship', in Hearn, Sheila G. (ed.), 'Cencrastus' No. 13, Summer
1983, pp. 17 - 20,
*
*
*
*
External links
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*[
https://findingaids.library.columbia.edu/ead/nnc-rb/ldpd_4079118#description
Finding aid to Naomi Mitchison papers at Columbia University. Rare
Book & Manuscript Library.]
*
*[
http://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=3139
Literary Encyclopedia detailed entry], which says she had seven
children and that she received her CBE in 1981
*[
https://www.theguardian.com/obituaries/story/0,3604,322196,00.html
Guardian obituary], which states she had six children, and that she
received her CBE in 1985
*[
https://www.theguardian.com/Columnists/Column/0,5673,320853,00.html#article_continue
Naomi Mitchison - a queen, a saint and a shaman, by Neil Ascherton,
Guardian 17 January 1999]
*[
http://www.spartacus-educational.com/Wmitchison.htm Spartacus entry]
*[
http://heritage.scotsman.com/profiles.cfm?cid=1&id=1928012005
The Scotsman biographical profile]
*[
https://web.archive.org/web/20050216193251/http://www.canongate.net/NaomiMitchison
Another entry from Canongate publishers]
*[
http://www.lib.rochester.edu/camelot/intrvws/mitchisn.htm Interview
15 April 1989 with Naomi Mitchison] , focusing on her Arthurian novel
"To the Chapel Perilous" (1955)
*[
https://web.archive.org/web/20070927014710/http://web311.pavilion.net/PRmitchison.htm
Gilbert "Dick" Mitchison entry]
*[
http://stirnet.com/html/genie/british/hh4aa/haldane02.htm Haldane
genealogy] her grandparents were Robert Haldane of Cloan (1805-77)
and his second wife Mary Elizabeth Burdon-Sanderson (d. 1925)
*[
http://feministsf.org/authors/mitchison.html Partial Bibliography]
*[
https://www.beccon.org/NMM/index.html Naomi Mitchison - Towards A
Bibliography] Extensive ongoing bibliography project by Violet
Williams (NM's late secretary), Roger Robinson, and Caroline Mullan -
lists over 2000 separate items
*[
https://web.archive.org/web/20051217031631/http://lcrw.net/books/mitchison.htm
some literary information, and useful links]
*[
https://web.archive.org/web/20060213220945/http://www.honours.gov.uk/honours/chivalry.asp
British Honours]
*
*[
https://thediaryjunction.blogspot.com/2009/01/ordinary-people.html
The Diary Junction Blog]
*[
http://www.pikle.co.uk/diaryjunction/data/mitchison.html Diary
Junction website with links]
*[
https://web.archive.org/web/20160303195215/http://archiveshub.ac.uk/data/gb0193-mit
Borthwick Institute for Archives, University of York], files of her
writings whilst in Botswana
*[
https://web.archive.org/web/20111026122156/http://www.strangehorizons.com/reviews/2008/06/an_experimental.shtml
An Experimental Life: Books by and about Naomi Mitchison, by Nic
Clarke]. Article posted at the 'Strange Horizons' website 30 June 2008
*[
http://www.open.ac.uk/researchprojects/makingbritain/content/naomi-mitchison
Biography at The Open University]
*[
http://www.encyclopedia.com/article-1G2-3408300239/mitchison-naomi-margaret.html
Encyclopedia.com]
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=========
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Original Article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naomi_Mitchison
