Partridge, Frances ___ 1900-2004 ___ British ___ writer

BIOGRAPHICAL SUMMARY
Partridge was born at Bedford Square, London, the sixth child in a well-established family. She studied at Bedales, where she met Lytton Strachey's sister, and at Newnham College, Cambridge. As a student she fell in with Dora Carrington and Ralph Partridge who were to become part of the famous Bloomsbury Group. After university, she worked in a London bookshop for six years. In 1933, the year after Lytton Strachey died and Carrington - Ralph Partridge's wife - committed suicide, she married Partridge. They had one son, Burgo, and, as pacifists during the war, lived a relatively quiet life at Ham Spray, Wiltshire. However, Ralph died abruptly in 1960, and their only son, Burgo, died three years later. Thereafter, Frances began to edit and publish her diaries, documenting her life and that of her friends over a period of about three decades. The first of these volumes appeared in 1978, and the last in 1998. She lived to be over a 100 years old, and was thus feted as the last surviving member of the Bloomsbury group.
A biography link
Wikipedia bio

DIARY DATES, CONTENT DESCRIPTORS
1940-1971 ___ domestic literary social travel family people self music nature

WEB TEXT LINKS
a few pages
a few pages
several extracts

ORIGINAL MANUSCRIPT LINKS
Cambridge University: King's College Archive Centre

SOME PUBLISHED TITLES
A Pacifist's War  1940-1945
Everything to Lose  1945-1960
Good Company  1967-1970
 

May 2005, April 2008, April 2013
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IMPORTANT NOTES AND CAUTIONS: 1) The first line of basic information may be incomplete in several ways: some historical figures have different names (titles, pen-names); their birth and death dates may be unknown or uncertain (g - guess, c - circa); similarly, their occupations may be unknown, or they may have had other jobs; and, for early diarists, I've used 'British' a bit too freely. 2) The biographical summary may not be accurate. It was compiled quickly from various sources, mostly on the internet, and the facts were not checked anywhere near as rigorously as they would have been if they'd been intended for publication in a printed form. 3) The journal dates and descriptors (which are in no particular order) must be treated with caution: since I have not examined the diaries myself, the descriptors are only guesses based on bibliographies, anthologies and internet biographies. 4) For the biography and etext links, I have ignored any sites with charges, and I have avoided, wherever possible, those with pop-ups or too much advertising. I have limited myself to providing three etext links where there is some variety between them. 5) For the original manuscript links, I have limited myself to providing a maximum of two (although, for a few diarists, their original diaries are held in more than two places). 6) I have provided the titles - chosen randomly - for up to three printed editions of the diaries.