Ivy Compton-Burnett And Her Art

Twentyfive years ago when Ivy Compton-Burnett died in her sleep, the literary world lamented the death of a family chronicler. In a period, spanning over fifty years, she wrote twenty novels which made her stand apart from the mainstream of life. She established a trend of her own by portraying the upper middle-class life of the late Victorian era not in its splendour and glory but in its ugly best. The writer, who was honoured with Dame Commander of the British Empire and who won James Tait Black Memorial Book prize distinguished herself as an unusual writer by restricting the time and range of her novels. Though she lived through the most difficult times of history she did not allow the external world to dominate and creep into her inner world. She was known as ?uncontemporaneous? novelist writing in modern times. Ivy Comption-Burnet and her Art tries to analyse in detail the novels of Dame Ivy, her plot construction, character portrayal, comic and tragic elements and her views on various aspects of society besides pointing out the influence of her own background on her works. The common features between Dame Ivy and other famous writers have also been brought into focus. This comprehensive study would be found of great interest by literary critics, scholars of English Literature, especially those academics and literatures who are interested in modern novels and the novelists.