Pamela Hansford Johnson, The "Helena Trilogy": Too Dear for My Possessing, An Avenue of Stone and A Summer to Decide

Wendy Pollard (Independent Scholar - Europe)

Ed. by Peter Childs, Birmingham Newman University
The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 1.2.1.09: English Writing and Culture: Postwar and Contemporary Britain , 1945-present.
Vol. editors: Gina Lyle (University of Glasgow), Graham MacPhee (University of Manchester), Kerry Myler (Birmingham Newman University), Jenni Ramone (The Nottingham Trent University)

Dates

First circulation or publication 1940 - 1948

Places

United Kingdom (Country of Origin)

Genres and Modes

Novel

Resources

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The first novel in what was to become known as “The Helena Trilogy” was not planned by the author, Pamela Hansford Johnson, as the first in a series. If it had been, the sequence might have been labelled the “Pickering Quartet”, since Claud Pickering is the first person narrator of the three novels under discussion –

Too Dear for My Possessing

(1940),

An Avenue of Stone

(1947) and

A Summer to Decide

(1948) – and he and members of his family also appear in relatively minor roles in Johnson’s

Winter Quarters

(1944).

In the latter novel, however, the interlinked stories of army personnel, their families and the residents of the English village in which the troops are temporarily stationed, are related by an omniscient voice. The Spectator reviewer judged the novel to be“both

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2324 words

Citation: Pollard, Wendy. "The "Helena Trilogy": Too Dear for My Possessing, An Avenue of Stone and A Summer to Decide". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 30 May 2015 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=35634, accessed 16 April 2024.]

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