Allanah Harper (6 November 1904 – 3 November 1992) was an English author.[2][1] She is best known for founding the journal Echanges (Exchanges), and for her 1948 autobiography.
Allanah Harper (6 November 1904 – 3 November 1992) was an English author.[2][1] She is best known for founding the journal Echanges (Exchanges), and for her 1948 autobiography.
Harper came from a successful family and traveled extensively owing to her father's career as an engineering contractor.[3] She moved to France as a young adult, founding the journal Echanges, which attempted to give British and French writers an audience for each other's work. She introduced writers such as
W. H. Auden,
T. S. Eliot and
Virginia Woolf to the French.[1][4] She made funds available to
Sybille Bedford over a period of 3 years to enable her to write her first book.
In 1948 she published a book of memories from her childhood entitled All Trivial Fond Records, named for a quote from Hamlet[6] and in 1976 co-edited an anthology of Dame Edith Sitwell's work entitled Fire of the Mind. The Des Moines Register wrote that her autobiographical, All Trivial Fond Records, "may well be the most charming book of the year."[3] The Chicago Tribune wrote that "Miss Harper's account of her Edwardian childhood and Georgian youth is one of the most delightful we have read in a long time."[7]
She was friends with the poet Brian Howard.[2] Harper later contributed useful anecdotes for Marie-Jaqueline Lancaster's biography of Brian Howard. However Harper objected to him being called a "failure" and to Lancaster's emphasis on his homosexuality which she considered to be an "illness" and something that should not be drawn attention to.[2]
Harper died three days before her 88th birthday on 3 November 1992.[5] Her work has been archived at the Harry Ransom Center in the University of Texas at Austin.[1]
My published books:
