Archive of Victoria Glendinning

Collection

The collection comprises literary papers, including notes, drafts, research papers, related correspondence and fan letters; professional and personal letters and papers; and general correspondence files.

Dates

Creation: c.1865-2023
Creation: Majority of material found within 1958-2023, n.d.

Extent

7.05 linear metres (113 boxes)

Language of Materials

English
German
French
Spanish; Castilian
Hebrew

Conditions Governing Access

Some material is closed.

Preferred Citation

Oxford, Bodleian Libraries [followed by shelfmark and folio or page reference, e.g. MS. 23709/1].

Please see our help page for further guidance on citing archives and manuscripts.

Full range of shelfmarks:

MSS. 23709/1-110, MSS. 23709 Photogr. 1-3

Collection ID (for staff)

CMD ID 23709

Additional Description

Abstract

Archive of Victoria Glendinning

Biographical / Historical

Victoria Glendinning (née Seebohm) was born on 23 April 1937, the daughter of Frederic Seebohm, banker, later Baron Seebohm, and Evangeline Seebohm (née Hurst). She attended Somerville College, Oxford where she studied Modern Languages. She married Nigel Glendinning in 1958, and they divorced in 1981. She married Terence de Vere White in 1982, and they remained married until his death in 1994. She married Kevin Patrick O'Sullivan in 1996, and they remained married until his death in 2020. She has four sons from her first marriage.

She has written and edited seventeen novels and biographies, including Vita: The Life of V. Sackville-West (1983) and Trollope (1992) both of which won the Whitbread Prize for Biography. She was Editorial Assistant of the Times Literary Supplement between 1974 and 1978, and has contributed reviews and articles to various newspapers and magazines throughout her career.

She was appointed CBE in 1998 and was made a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 1982.

For full biographical details, see Who's Who.

Immediate Source of Acquisition

Purchased by the Bodleian Library with the support of the Roy Davids Fund from Betram Rota, 2024.

Bibliography

A Suppressed Cry: Life and Death of a Quaker Daughter (Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1969)
Elizabeth Bowen: Portrait of a Writer (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1977)
Edith Sitwell: A Unicorn Among Lions (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1981)
Vita: The Life of V. Sackville-West (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1983)
Rebecca West: A Life (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1987)
The Grown-Ups (Hutchinson, 1989)
Trollope (Hutchinson, 1992)
Electricity (Hutchinson, 1995)
Ed. with M. Glendinning, Sons & Mothers (Virago, 1996)
Jonathan Swift (Hutchinson, 1998)
Flight (Scribner, 2002)
Leonard Woolf: A Life (Simon & Schuster, 2006)
Ed. with Judith Robertson, Love's Civil War: Elizabeth Bowen and Charles Ritchie: Letters and Diaries, 1941-1973 (Simon & Schuster, 2009)
Raffles and the Golden Opportunity (Profile Books, 2012)
The Butcher's Daughter (Duckworth Overlook, 2018)
Family Business: an Intimate History of John Lewis and the Partnership (William Collins, 2021)