Phyllis Bottome

Phyllis Forbes-Dennis (May 31, 1884 – August 22, 1963) was a British novelist and short story writer who wrote under her birth name, Phyllis Bottome. She was born in Rochester, Kent to an American clergyman, Rev. William Macdonald Bottome and Mary (Leatham) Bottome. She married A.E. Forbes-Dennis in 1917. ["Twentieth Century Authors: A Biographical Dictionary of Modern Literature", edited by Stanley J. Kunitz and Howard Haycraft, New York, The H. W. Wilson Company, 1942. ]

She had several works - "Private Worlds", "The Mortal Storm", "Danger Signal" - adapted to film. [imdb name|0098712] In addition to fiction she is also known as an Adlerian who wrote a biography of Alfred Adler. [ [http://www.pep-web.org/document.php?id=ijp.040.0066b Psychoanalytic Electronic Publishing] ]

Education

Bottome studied psychoanalysis under Alfred Adler while in Vienna [Dumont, Herve. "Frank Borzage." London: McFarland & Company, 2006.] . This would become useful in her work later on.

Books

She wrote her first novel when she was just seventeen.
* "Alfred Adler - Apostle of Freedom". London 1939, Faber & Faber, 3rd Ed. 1957
* "The Dark Tower", 1916
* "Kingfisher", 1922
* "The Perfect Wife", 1924
* "Life of Olive Schreiner", 1924
* "Old Wine", 1926
* "The Belated Reckoning", 1926
* "Windlestraws", 1929
* "The Advances of Harriet", 1933
* "Private Worlds", 1934
* "Murder in the Bud"
* "Level Crossing", 1936
* "The Mortal Storm", 1938
* "Danger Signal", 1939
* "Masks and Faces", 1940
* "Formidable to Tyrants", 1941
* "London Pride", 1941
* "Mansion House of Liberty", 1941
* "The Heart of a Child", 1942
* "Within a Cup", 1943
* "Survival", 1943
* "From the Life", 1944, London, Faber & Faber. Six studies of the author's friends Alfred Adler, Max Beerbohm, Ivor Novello, Sara Delano Roosevelt, Ezra Pound, Margaret MacDonald Bottome.
* "The Lifeline", 1946
* "Innocence and Experience", 1947
* "Search for a Soul", 1947
* "Fortune's Finger", 1950
* "Under the Skin - Love Drew no Color Line when a White Woman entered a Negro's World", 1950
* "The Challenge", 1953
* "The Secret Stair", 1954
* "Against Whom?" 1954. By chance a patient is brought to a Sanatorium on the verge of death, how he not only recovers but manages to influence the lives of the scientists who have observed him is the subject of this novel. In the course of the book the principle characters find that they must either think of others and put that thought into practise or those same 'others' will become their enemy, and destroy, one by one, his most intimate relationships.
* "Eldorado Jane", 1956
* "Walls of Glass", 1958
* "The Goal", 1962 - her autobiography
* "Our New Order or Hitler's? A Selection of Speches by Winston Churchill, Archbishop of Canterbury, Anthony Eden & Others", ed. by Ph. Bottome, Penguin Books Middlesex 1943

In 1935, her novel "Private Worlds" was made into a film. Set in a psychiatric clinic, Bottome's knowledge of psychoanalysis proved useful in creating a realistic scene. Bottome saw her share of trouble with "Danger Signal" which the Hays Office forbade from becoming a Hollywood film.Germany became Bottome's home in the late 1930s [ Dumont, Herve. "Frank Borzage." London: McFarland & Company, 2006.] and it inspired her to pen "The Mortal Storm", a film which was the first to mention Hitler's name and be set in Nazi Germany.

References