Elizabeth Jennings was born in Boston, Lincolnshire in 1926, the daughter of a doctor. Her education was received in private and public schools in England, including an Honours Degree in English from St. Anne's College, Oxford. She began writing poetry in adolescence; her first major publication was in The Spectator, 1949, with the poem, The clock. After graduation Miss Jennings worked for a time in the Oxford City Library and later in the office of a London publisher, Chatto and Windus. In 1953 she published her first book of poems, Poems (Fantasy Press), which received an Arts Council Prize as the best book of original English verse to be published between January 1951 and June 1953. Her poems also appeared in such periodicals as The New Statesman, The Spectator, Times Literary Supplement, The Listener, Encounter, The London Magazine, Botteghe Oscure, and the New Yorker.
In 1956 she received the Somerset Maugham Award for her second book of poems, A Way of looking (Deutsch) and the used the prize for an extended trip to Italy in 1957. Other prizes for her poetry include: the Poetry Book Society Summer Choice in 1961 for Song for a birth or a death (Dufour), an Arts Council Poetry Bursary in 1965, and the Richard Hillary Award in 1966 for The mind has mountains (MacMillan)
Miss Jennings suffered intermittent mental breakdowns from 1964-1968, and was hospitalized in Warneford Hospital at Oxford; this experience is documented in this collection by her correspondence with Rugena Stanley and in several personal notebooks. Subsequently the experience became the subject of much of her poetry. Anne Ridler has said of Miss Jennings: “The unwavering search for truth about an emotion or a state of mind, the refusal to be satisfied with first appearances, is always her strength.” (Guardian) Anthony Thwaite has attributed to her work “The excitement, the visionary quality, of arduous search and sudden discover,” adding, “For my mind she is one of the two best living English poets under forty-five.” (Spectator)
A partial bibliograph includes:
Poetry: Poems, Fantasy Press, 1953
A way of looking, Deutsch and Rinehart, 1955
A sense of the world, Deutsch, 1958
Song for a birth or a death, Deutsch, 1961
Recoveries, Deutsch, 1964
The mind has mountains, MacMillan, 1966
The secret brother (children's poems) 1966
Collected poems, 1967, Macmillan 1967
Translation: The Sonnets of Michelangelo, Folio Society, 1961
Editor: An Anthology of Modern Verse, 1940-1960, Methuen, 1961
Prose: Making human relations work (with Francis Jennings) Boston 1951
Let's have some poetry, Museum Press Ltd., 1960
Every changing shape, Deutsch, 1961
Frost, Oliver and Boyd, 1964
Christianity and poetry, Burns and Oates, 1965.
Accs: 814, 815, 819, 832, 862, 1061, 1303, 1314
Correspondence, manuscripts, notebooks, and literary papers, 1954-
Correspondence, 1956-1968, bulking 1964-1968, including 100 postal and note cards from Elizabeth Jennings to Rugena Stanley, Oxford, during periods of mental stress, written from Spain and hospitals in England, and letters from Richard Church, Robert Conquest, Helen Lehmann, William Somerset Maugham, William Stanley Merwin, Edwin Muir, Victoria Mary Sckville-West, Edith Sitwell, Constantine Trypanis, John Wain, and Ciceley Veronica Wedgwood, discussing Miss Jennings' acceptance of the Somerset Maugham Award, 1956, her poetry, and invitations to dinners and club meetings, Several unsigned drafts of Jennings letters follow, including one in defense of Colin Wilson's Religion and the Rebel, one to the New Statesman concerning religious braodcasts on B.B.C., and one concerning a review of Let's have some poetry, 114 items. Poems, arranged alphabetically by title, are largely unpublished, with some appearing in Song for a birth or a death, Recoveries, The mind has mountains, and the New Poems section of Collected Poems, 1967, ca. 290 items. Essays, arranged alphabetically by title, discuss David Jones, Marianne Moore, Emily Dickinson, Ezra Pound, poetry in the 1960's, Miss Jennings' experience in Rome, her mental illness, writing poetry, personal experiences; also included are Reflections or notes for ajournal, notes for an essay and a script for the B.B.C, 9 items. Reviews, arranged alphabetically by author of the work reviewed, concern books by Thomas Gilby, Louis McNeice, O.A. Sherrard, R.S.Thomas, Catherine York, and the Penguin Book of Mystical Verse, 6 items. Notebooks, described in detail elsewhere in this register, are separated into four categories and arranged chronologically: 1, Personal notebooks, 1957-1965, 8 items; 2, Notebooks containing largely mss. of poetry, 1954-ca.1964, 6 items; 3, Notebooks containing essays and reviews, 1960-1966, 14 items; 4, notebooks containing mss. of books, 1958-ca.1965, 10 items. Miscellany contains a newspaper clipping and unidentified note sheets and a photograph, 4 items.
A.Ls.S., T.Ls.S., Mss., notebooks, miscellany, 461 items
Correspondence in this collection originates from Kent, London, Oxford and Reading, England; Cambridge, Mass; Florence Italy; Barcelona, Spain; St. Jean-Cap Ferrat, France.
March 1, 1967 Add July 3, 1969; June, 1975
Accs: 814, 815, 819, 832, 862, 1061, 1303, 1314
Purchase, 1967, 1969
Open
Descriptive list of notebooks: