Rosamond Nina Lehmann, Invitation to the Waltz

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 1932

Places

England (Country of Origin)

Genres and Modes

Novel

Resources

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After their somewhat hostile reception of Rosamond Lehmann’s second novel,

A Note in Music

(1930), many contemporary critics assumed that the author had subsequently made a conscious decision to return in her third novel to the subject-matter of her first great success,

Dusty Answer

(1927).

Invitation to the Waltz

(1932) was much praised as a study of adolescence, of the undramatic end of an innocent, happy childhood, and of the dawning of awareness of the onset of adult life. The action of the novel spans a week which begins with Olivia Curtis’s seventeenth birthday and ends the morning after her first grown-up dance. However, Lehmann had originally intended this to be the prologue of a long novel, following Olivia into a disillusioned womanhood; it was only when the first section…

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731 words

Citation: Pollard, Wendy. "Invitation to the Waltz". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 05 February 2004 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=4397, accessed 25 April 2024.]

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