G. E. Trevelyan

Gertrude Eileen Trevelyan (17 October 1903 – 22 February 1941) was an English novelist.

She is the first woman to be awarded the Newdigate prize.

Trevelyan was born on 17 October 1903 in Bath, Somerset, England.

Her only brother, John Otto Trevelyan, died as an infant in 1908.

Her father, Edward Trevelyan, reported his occupation as "private means" on the 1911 Census, which also showed the family as employing four domestic servants.

She attended Princess Helena College, then located in Ealing, and was confirmed at St Peter's Church, Ealing in 1920.

She attended Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford from 1923 to 1927, graduating with a second-class degree.

After leaving Oxford, she moved to London, where she first lived in a women's residence hotel in Bermondsey.

She later lived as a lodger in several locations in Kensington.

She had a modest inheritance that enabled her to concentrate on her writing.

She chose not to engage in any activities that would have made her more well-known, such as teaching or reviewing.

She did not get married and had a small group of friends.

Her first novel, Appius and Virginia, was published by Martin Secker in 1932.

Taking its title from a play by John Webster, the book told of an experiment undertaken by an English spinster, Virginia Hutton, to raise an orangutan she names Appius as a human.

She trains Appius to sit up, eat like a human, and spends years attempting to get him to speak, read, and write.

Trevelyan takes the reader into minds of both Virginia and Appius, revealing the failure of both to understand the other in any meaningful way.

In his review for The Spectator, L. A. G. Strong called it, "A work by a new author which is exciting both in promise and achievement. Miss Trevelyan has made brilliant debut."

Appius and Virginia was Trevelyan's only book to be published in the United States as well as the United Kingdom.

Her second novel, Hot-House, was published by Martin Secker in 1933.

The book drew heavily on her experiences at Oxford, showing an undergraduate, Mina Cook, and her relationships while a student at the fictional "Queen Anne's College."

Reviewing the book in the Daily Mail, Compton MacKenzie wrote, "The whole thing is extremely well done, and by the time I had finished with it the atmosphere of damp heat had made me feel like an overfed gloxinia."

In 1934, Martin Secker published As It Was in the Beginning, which took place entirely in the mind of a woman lying in a care home in the last few days before her death.

Trevelyan takes the reader back through the woman's life, in memories, to the moment of her birth.

The Times Literary Supplement review called it, "a book which is almost unreadable in its intensity, but which compels one to go on reading in spite of almost physical discomfort, by the admiration one feels for the author's ingenuity and her uncanny insight into human beings."

A War Without a Hero (1935), her longest novel, was her last to be published by Martin Secker.

Its reviews were mostly critical.

In the Manchester Guardian, one reviewer wrote, "The use of a modern technique by which unspoken thoughts are shot on to the page in machine-gun sentences generally beginning with the verb does not suffice to make the mutual attraction of the young people credible.... Miss Trevelyan leaves one reader unconvinced."

Her next three novels were published by Victor Gollancz.

Two Thousand Million Man-Power, published in 1937, showed the influence of John Dos Passos, as Trevelyan interwove headlines from newspaper stories, radio bulletins, and newsreels into the story of a London couple, Katherine and Robert, as they go through courtship and early marriage while dealing with financial worries, unemployment, and social standing.

Reviewing the book for The Guardian, Wilfrid Gibson wrote, "The theme of the book is the grip of the modern machine which whirls us all in its soul-destroying revolutions."

Theme with Variations and William's Wife were both published in 1938.

The first was Trevelyan's most experimental work, weaving the narratives of three very different Londoners, none of whom ever encounter the other and all of whom come to tragic ends.

Trevelyan was injured in October 1940 when the flat she was living in at 107 Lansdowne Road, Notting Hill, was damaged during the Blitz.

She died of her injuries at a care home in Bath in February 1941.

While at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford, she won the Newdigate Prize for a 250-line poem in blank verse titled, "Julia, Daughter of Claudius".

The subject of the poem was referred to in John Addington Symonds' book, Renaissance in Italy.

During excavations on the Appian Way in 1485, a perfectly preserved body of a girl around 15 was discovered.

The body was removed to the Capitol, where it became the object of a cult that led the Pope to order the body to be removed and buried in secret.

She told the Daily Mail, "I did it for a joke", and said that she had written little poetry before the competition.

The poem was published soon after by Basil Blackwell.