Pamela Hansford Johnson, The "Dorothy Merlin" Trilogy: The Unspeakable Skipton, Night and Silence, Who is Here?, Cork Street, Next to the Hatters

Wendy Pollard (Independent Scholar - Europe)

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 1959 - 1965

Places

United Kingdom (Country of Origin)

Genres and Modes

Novel

Resources

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Pamela Hansford Johnson had not conceived that her novel

Too Dear for My Possessing

(1940) would be the first in a trilogy, nor did she envisage a second trilogy when she later decided, for the first time, to write a wholly satirical novel. Her two trilogies share a further similarity in having now become named (not, as far as can be established, by the author) after a relatively subsidiary, although otherwise memorable, character, “Helena” in the first case, and “Dorothy Merlin” in the second.

The central character in The Unspeakable Skipton (1959), the first of the latter trilogy is the eponymous Daniel Skipton. Johnson’s short prefatory note explained that she had always wanted to write “a study of an artist’s paranoia” and that:

The central character in

The Unspeakable

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2487 words

Citation: Pollard, Wendy. "The "Dorothy Merlin" Trilogy: The Unspeakable Skipton, Night and Silence, Who is Here?, Cork Street, Next to the Hatters". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 03 November 2015 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=35684, accessed 04 May 2024.]

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