Barbara Comyns Carr

Helen Rachel Cousins (Birmingham Newman University); Revised By: Avril Horner (Kingston University)
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Barbara Comyns Carr, writing under the name Barbara Comyns, published eleven books between 1947 and 1989. Margaret Drabble notes in a reprint of one of Comyns’ novels that her works “are strange and unsettling, and her career was unorthodox”, adding that she was “never a mainstream writer” (Drabble, 2011). However, she is a writer who continues to permeate the literary scene, whose original voice periodically catches the attention of other writers who express their delight and astonishment at finding such original (though neglected) masterpieces.

In her introduction to Comyns’ second novel, Our Spoons Came From Woolworths (1950), Maggie O’Farrell notes that Comyns had “a life defined by variety and instability – which is wholly unsurprising once you’ve read her

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Citation: Cousins, Helen Rachel, Avril Horner. "Barbara Comyns Carr". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 08 August 2016; last revised 04 November 2024. [https://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=13243, accessed 04 December 2024.]

13243 Barbara Comyns Carr 1 Historical context notes are intended to give basic and preliminary information on a topic. In some cases they will be expanded into longer entries as the Literary Encyclopedia evolves.

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