St James Churchyard, Ashwick, Somerset, England[1]
Occupation(s)
Biographer, children's author, novelist
Parents
Alexander Almedingen (father)
Olga Sergeevna (mother)
E. M. Almedingen (born Marta Aleksandrovna Almedingen, also known as Martha Edith Almedingenorvon Almedingen; 21 July 1898 – 5 March 1971) was a British novelist, biographer, children's author,[2] and member of the Royal Society of Literature.[1][2]
On her mother's side, she was descended from the aristocratic Poltoratsky family; her maternal grandfather was Serge Poltoratzky, the literary scholar and bibliophile who ended his days in exile, shuttling between France and England. His second wife, Ellen Sarah Southee, the daughter of an English gentleman farmer, grew up in Kent, and was related to poet Robert Southey. Their children had English governesses and grew up speaking English. Their daughter and the novelist's mother, Olga Sergeevna, grew up in Kent— but, fascinated by her father's native Russian, moved to Russia in 1800s. There, she married Alexander Almedingen,[3] who had turned his back on his family's military traditions to become a scientist.
After her father abandoned his family in 1900, they increasingly lived in impoverishment. Despite this, the author was able to attend the Kseniinsky Institute in 1913[2] and eke out a living in the increasingly desperate times of the Russian revolution and civil war. She received the highest honors in history and literature at Kseniinsky.[2] She transferred from Kseniinsky to Petrograd University in 1916, where she attended until she earned her first doctorate in 1920.[1][4]
From 1920, Almedingen taught English history and literature at Petrograd University.[1] She then emigrated to England in 1923, where she began work as a journalist.[1] She settled in Shropshire, living initially at Worfield,[5] and later at Church Stretton by time of the Second World War.[6]
In parallel, she dabbled in fiction writing with works such as “An Examination in Diplomacy”, before ultimately going on to publish upwards of 60 books over the next several decades.[2] Despite her wide range of work from biography to poetry, she became well-known for her children's novels in particular.[7] Almedingen wrote two historical novels: The Lion of the North (1938), about Charles XII of Sweden, and Fair Haven (1956), about Peter the Great.[8] In 1951, she became a lecturer in Russian literature at Oxford University.[1]
In 1941 she won the $5,000 Atlantic Monthly nonfiction prize for one of her autobiographical works, Tomorrow Will Come. Five years later she moved to Frogmore, a house near Upton Magna in Shropshire, where she remained until her death.[9]
^E. M. Almedingen, Tomorrow Will Come (Holt Rinehart Winston, 1968), p. 19.
^DePiero, Deborah Lucia (2007). "E.M. Almedingen". Guide to the Literary Masters & Their Works. Retrieved 30 December 2015 – via EBSCOhost.
^Dickens, Gordon (1987). An Illustrated Literary Guide to Shropshire. Shropshire Libraries. pp. 1, 120. ISBN0-903802-37-6.
^An Illustrated Literary Guide to Shropshire, pp.1,94.
^Fryatt, Norma R. (1995). "Almedingen, E.M.". In Berger, Laura Standley (ed.). Twentieth Century Children's Writers (4th ed.). Detroit: St. James Press. pp. 22–24. ISBN9781558621770.
^Taylor, W.A (1957). Historical Fiction: National Book League Readers' Guides. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. p. 13.
^An Illustrated Literary Guide to Shropshire, pp.1-2,117.
^"Edith M. Almedingen". The Internet Speculative Fiction Database. Retrieved 2 February 2019.
^The lion of the north : Charles XII-King of Sweden (Book, 1938). OCLC. OCLC1063928075.
