In a life that spanned the twentieth century, Naomi Mitchison published over ninety books – novels, plays, short stories, poetry, essays, children’s fiction, travel writing, history and autobiography. As an active feminist and socialist, her writing was always politically engaged but she found that she had to promote her most radical ideals under the cover of historical or, later, science fiction. Her frank memoirs and the diary she kept for Mass Observation during the Second World War are important historical and social documents.

Born in 1897 in Edinburgh, Naomi Haldane was the younger child of John Scott Haldane, a philosopher and physiologist of Liberal sympathies, and Louisa Kathleen Trotter, whose politics wer

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First published 14 November 2005

Citation: Wallace, Diana. "Naomi Mitchison". The Literary Encyclopedia. 14 November 2005.
[http://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=3139, accessed 9 February 2010.]