Ethel Mannin

Ethel Edith Mannin (1900 – 1984) was a popular British novelist and travel writer. She was born in London into a family with an Irish background.

Her writing career began in copy-writing and journalism. She became a prolific author, and also politically and socially concerned. She supported the Labour Party but became disillusioned in the 1930s. A visit in 1936 to the USSR left her unfavourable to communism. According to R. F. Foster ("W. B. Yeats: A Life" II p.512) 'She was a member of the Independent Labour Party, and her ideology in the 1930s tended to anarcho-syndicalism rather than hardline Communism, but she was emphatically and vociferously left-wing'. She came to support anarchism, and wrote about the American anarchist Emma Goldman, a colleague in the "Solidaridad Internacional Antifascista" at the time of the Spanish Civil War.

She married twice: in 1919, a short-lived relationship with one daughter, and in 1938 to Reginald Reynolds, a Quaker and go-between in India between Mahatma Gandhi and the British authorities. In 1934-5 she was in an intense but problematic intellectual, emotional and physical relationship with W. B. Yeats, who was on the rebound from Margot Ruddock and about to fall for Dorothy Wellesley (a detailed account is in R. F. Foster's life of Yeats, concluding mainly that her emotional engagement was much less than his). She also had a well-publicised affair with Bertrand Russell.

Works

Autobiographies

*"Confessions and Impressions" (1930)
*"Privileged Spectator" (1939)
*"Connemara Journal" (1947)
*"Brief Voices" (1959)
*"Young in the Twenties: A Chapter of Autobiography" (1971)
*"Sunset over Dartmoor: A Final Chapter of Autobiography" (1977)

Other works

*"Martha" (1923)
*"Hunger of the Sea" (1924)
*"Sounding Brass" (1925)
*"Three New Love Stories" (1925) with Warwick Deeping and Gilbert Frankau
*"Pilgrims" (1927)
*"Green Willows" (1928)
*"Crescendo, Being the Dark Odyssey of Gilbert Stroud" (1929)
*"Children of the Earth" (1930)
*"Ragged Banners" (1931)
*"Bruised Wings and Other Stories" (1931)
*"Green Figs" (1931) stories
*"The Tinsel Eden and Other Stories" (1931)
*"All Experience" (1932)
*"Linda Shawn" (1932)
*"Venetian Blinds" (1933)
*"Dryad" (1933) stories
*"Men Are Unwise" (1934)
*"Some Adventures With A School" (1934) with Margaret Johnston
*"Cactus" (1935)
*"Forever Wandering" (1935)
*"The Falconer's Voice" (1935)
*"South to Samarkand" (1936)
*"The Pure Flame" (1936)
*"Sounding Brass" (1937)
*"Women Also Dream" (1937)
*"Women and the Revolution" (1938)
*"Rose and Sylvie" (1938)
*"Darkness My Bride" (1938)
*"Rolling in the Dew" (1940)
*"Commonsense and Morality" (1941)
*"Red Rose: A Novel based on the Life of Emma Goldman" (1941)
*"Captain Moonlight" (1942)
*"The Blossoming Bough" (1942)
*"Castles in the Street" (1942)
*"Proud Heaven" (1943)
*"No More Mimosa" (1943)
*"Bread and Roses: An Utopian Survey and Blue-Print" (1944)
*"Comrade O Comrade, or, Low-Down on the Left" (1945)
*"Lucifer and the Child" (1945)
*"Selected Stories" (1946)
*"The Dark Forest" (1946)
*"Bavarian Story" (1948)
*"German Journey" (1948)
*"Late Have I Loved Thee" (1948)
*"Jungle Journey: 7000 Miles through India and Pakistan" (1950)
*"At Sundown the Tiger" (1951)
*"The Fields at Evening" (1952)
*"The Wild Swans and Other Tales Based on the Ancient Irish" (1952)
*"This Was a Man: Some Memories of Robert Mannin by His Daughter" (1952)
*"Lover under Another Name" (1953)
*"Moroccan Mosaic" (1953)
*"So Tiberius …" (1954)
*"Two Studies in Integrity: Gerald Griffin and the Rev. Francis Mahony" ('Father Prout')" (1954)
*"Land of the Crested Lion: A Journey through Modern Burma" (1955)
*"The Living Lotus" (1956)
*"Pity the Innocent" (1957)
*"The Country of the Sea: Some Wanderings in Brittany" (1957)
*"Fragrance of Hyacinths" (1958)
*"Ann and Peter in Sweden" (1959)
*"The Blue-eyed Boy" (1959)
*"Ann and Peter in Japan" (1960)
*"The Flowery Sword: Travels in Japan" (1960)
*"Sabisha" (1961)
*"Ann and Peter in Austria" (1962)
*"Curfew at Dawn" (1962)
*"With Will Adams Through Japan" (1962)
*"A Lance for the Arabs: A Middle East Journey" (1963)
*"The Road to Beersheba" (Hutchinson, 1963).
*"Aspects of Egypt: Some Travels in the United Arab Republic" (1964)
*"Rebels' Ride. A Consideration of the Revolt of the Individual" (1964)
*"Lovely Land: The Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan" (1965)
*"The Burning Bush" (1965)
*"Loneliness: A Study of the Human Condition" (1966)
*"The Night and Its Homing" (1966)
*"The Lady and the Mystic" (1967)
*"An American Journey" (1967)
*"Bitter Babylon" (1968)
*"England for a Change" (1968)
*"The Saga of Sammy-Cat" (1969)
*"Practitioners of Love. Some Aspects of the Human Phenomenon" (1969)
*"The Midnight Street" (1969)
*"England at Large" (1970)
*"Free Pass to Nowhere" (1970)
*"My Cat Sammy" (1971)
*"England My Adventure" (1972)
*"The Curious Adventure of Major Fosdick" (1972)
*"Mission to Beirut" (1973)
*"Stories from My Life" (1973)
*"An Italian Journey" (1974)
*"Kildoon" (1974)
*"The Late Miss Guthrie" (1976)

Trivia

* From 1952 until her death in 1984 Mannin was chairwoman of Shrewsbury Town F.C. One of her dying wishes was that her ashes be strewn on Gay Meadow. Sadly this wish went unfulfilled for health and safety reasons.

External links

* [http://recollectionbooks.com/bleed/Encyclopedia/ManninEthel/mannin1.htm Ethel Mannin page] Stan Iverson Archives
* [http://www.wolfeangel.net/authorsim.htm British Authors of the Turn of the 20th Century]
* [http://www.shrewsburytown.co.uk Shrewsbury Town FC Official Website]