The above quotation ended the 22-year-old Pamela Hansford Johnson’s diary for 1934. Despite notable achievements at grammar school, she had been forced to leave formal education at 16 due to her widowed mother’s financial hardships, and had had to work as a secretary while augmenting her income with token remuneration from poems and short stories commissioned by small magazines. There has been no published collection of her short stories, although it is arguable that some of these can stand comparison with those of Katherine Mansfield or Elizabeth Bowen. In February 1934, however, a book of her poems, entitled Symphony for Full Orchestra, had been published, and her first novel, This Bed Thy Centre, written
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Citation: Pollard, Wendy. "Pamela Hansford Johnson". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 24 February 2015; last revised 10 September 2019. [https://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=2385, accessed 23 November 2024.]
