Enid Bagnold

Born in Rochester, Kent, on October 27, 1889, she spent part of her early childhood in Jamaica and was educated in England and France. She trained briefly at art school before turning to writing, and her first books drew on personal experience, including her time working in a military hospital during the First World War.

She became widely known as a novelist, poet, and playwright whose subjects ranged from childhood and family life to aging and social performance. Her best-known book, National Velvet (1935), became especially famous after its film adaptation, and her later stage success included The Chalk Garden, which helped secure her reputation in the theater as well as in fiction.

Over a long career, she was recognized for the breadth of her work and for a style that could be both delicate and unsparing. She died in 1981, leaving behind writing that still feels alert to the hidden dramas of ordinary life.