Catalogue description The Papers of Rosamond Nina Lehmann

The papers comprise mainly correspondence, including letters to Rosamond Lehmann from E. M. Forster, Dora Carrington, Julian Jebb, Rose Macaulay, Sir Compton MacKenzie, Siegfried Sassoon, Roger Senhouse, Virginia Woolf, Elizabeth Bowen, John G. Bennett, Kenneth Clark, Margaret Storm Jameson, Laurie Lee, William Plomer, Dadie Rylands, Stephen Spender and many others. The papers also contain letters from Rosamond Lehmann to her mother, photographs of friends, typescripts of a few broadcasts and speeches, and a manuscript of her poem 'The Bay'. Among the papers of friends held in the collection are poems by Goronwy Rees ('The Shell'), Edith Sitwell ('Mary Stuart to James Bothwell: Casket letter no. 3'), and a handful of letters received by Wogan Philipps.

Lehmann, Rosamond Nina, 1901-1990

Copyright in the writings of Rosamond Lehmann is held by Roland Phillipps and Selina Hastings, c/o MacMillan London, Cavaye Place, London SW10 9PG.

Some of the papers are reserved and may not be consulted by readers.

These papers were given to King's College by Rosamond Lehmann in 1970, with additional deposits in 1976-8. A recent accession of further papers has not yet been catalogued and is not available to readers.

A catalogue of the papers of Rosamond Lehmann is available in the Archive Centre reading room. Scanned images of this catalogue may be viewed on the Archive Centre website at http://www.kings.cam.ac.uk/library/archives/modern/catalogue/lehmann/.

Rosamond Nina Lehmann was born in Buckinghamshire on 3 Feb. 1901. She came up to Girton College, Cambridge in 1919 to read English and French. She married Leslie Runciman in 1923 and published her first novel, the best-seller 'Dusty Answer', in 1927. Shortly after this she and Leslie were divorced, and she married Wogan Philipps, 2nd Baron Milford, in November 1928.

Her reputation was established with 'A Note in Music', 'Invitation to the Waltz' and 'The Weather in the Streets', all published in the 1930s. By this time, Rosamond and her husband were friends of Lytton Strachey and Dora Carrington, and through them with other members of the Bloomsbury group. Virginia Woolf admired her novels. Relations with Wogan Philipps gradually deteriorated in the late 1930s and she began affairs with Goronwy Rees and later with Cecil Day Lewis. She continued to write novels, short stories and plays; her autobiographical statement 'The Swan in the Evening' was published in 1967. She died in March 1990 at Clareville Grove, London.