Elisabeth Kyle Explained

Agnes Mary Robertson Dunlop
Pseudonym:Elisabeth Kyle
Jan Ralston
Mary Forsyth
Birth Name:Agnes Mary Robertson Dunlop
Birth Place:Ayr[1]
Occupation:Author
Nationality:British
Period:1930–1980
Genre:Journalism
novels
children's books

Elisabeth Kyle, pseudonym of Agnes Mary Robertson Dunlop, (born 1 January 1901, died 23 February 1982), was a Scottish journalist and writer of novels, children's books and travel literature.[2]

She used the pen name Jan Ralston for publication of one of her books in the United States. Some of her journalism was published under the name Mary Forsyth.[3]

Biography

Agnes Mary Robertson Dunlop was born in Ayr, Scotland on 1 January 1901. Her mother was Elizabeth Riddell Dunlop and her father was James Dunlop, a lawyer in the family firm. He was keen on literature, introducing his daughter to the classics and monitoring the books to which she was exposed. He died when she was nine years old.

As a child she had no particular intention of becoming an author, and when she finished her education became a journalist, first with the Manchester Guardian and then with the Glasgow Herald. Her journalism includes articles about other Scottish women writers such as Mary Cleland and Nan Shepherd.[2] She wrote the regular "Ways of Women" column in the Nottingham Evening Post in the 1930s.[4]

Kyle's earliest published works were stories in children's annuals.[5] A large part of her output was books for children, published between the 1930s and 1980. Many of these were historical novels designed for a young audience, with heroines such as Charlotte Brontë, Mary II of England, Florence Nightingale and Clara Schumann. She wrote several novels for adults, including The Begonia Bed (1934), The Pleasure Dome (1943), The Tontine Belle (1951), and The Other Miss Evans (1958).[6]

She gave radio talks and wrote radio plays for children and adults.[1] [7] One of her novels for adults, The Regent's Candlesticks (1954), was broadcast on the BBC Light Programme as Book at Bedtime in 1995.[7] [8] She also adapted other books for radio, such as Neil Munro's The Daft Days in 1937.[9] In 1939 she was described in the Berwickshire News and General Advertiser as "well known as a writer for Children’s Hour, particularly in the adaptations she has made of folk tales".[10] Her first radio talk was given on Yugoslavia and was in 1941.[11]

Kyle travelled extensively; at the time of the publication of her first novel in 1934 she was said in the Nottingham Evening Press, to have travelled around Scandinavia by "tramp steamer", and to "know the Balkan States and their people more or less intimately".[12] The Liverpool Post in the same year described her as "wander[ing] about Europe and America in a more or less vagabond way in order to stisfy her craving for adventure".[13]

Dunlop was a friend of Josephine Tey and corresponded with her.[14]

Bibliography

Notes and References

  1. Book: Young Wings . 1954 . 11 Jan 2023 .
  2. Book: Gifford, D. . History of Scottish Women's Writing . Edinburgh University Press . 2020 . 978-0-7486-7266-0 . 11 Jan 2023 . 369.
  3. News: An Edinburgh Chronicle. "Mary Forsyth" . 19 January 2023 . Edinburgh Evening News . 11 July 1939 . "Mary Forsyth" is the pen-name of Miss Agnes Dunlop, of Ayr, who is also well known under the pseudonym, "Elisabeth Kyle".
  4. News: Kyle . Elisabeth . The Ways of Women . 19 January 2023 . Nottingham Evening Post . 2 December 1933.
  5. Web site: Princess of Orange . BookRags . 20 November 2019.
  6. Web site: Elisabeth Kyle (1901–1982) . January 2014 . Lesser-known British, Irish, & American women writers 1910–1960 . Furrowed Middlebrow . 20 November 2019.
  7. Web site: Elisabeth Kyle . The Genome Project . BBC . 11 January 2023.
  8. Web site: A Book at Bedtime . The Television & Radio Database . 11 January 2023.
  9. News: Broadcasting News. Neil Munro's "The Daft Days" - October 11 . 19 January 2023 . Leven Advertiser & Wemyss Gazette . 28 September 1937 . Neil Munro's famous novel, The Daft Days. which has been adapted for the microphone by Elisabeth Kyle, a well-known Scottish journalist.
  10. News: Some Broadcasts to Come . 19 January 2023 . Berwickshire News and General Advertiser . 5 December 1939.
  11. News: Broadcasting. Slavs and their Country . 19 January 2023 . Berwick Advertiser . 17 April 1941 . Listeners to Children's Hour will remember the many plays which she has written for young listeners, but her broadcast on April 26, will mark her first personal appearance at the microphone.
  12. News: Echoes from Town: New Authoress . 19 January 2023 . Nottingham Evening Post . 6 March 1934.
  13. News: A London Letter for Women . 19 January 2023 . Liverpool Daily Post . 12 March 1934.
  14. Book: Henderson . J.M. . McDermid . V. . Josephine Tey: A Life . Sandstone Press Limited . 2021 . 978-1-914518-08-9 . 11 Jan 2023 . 455.
  15. Book: Edwards, O.D. . British Children's Fiction in the Second World War . Edinburgh University Press . Societies at War . 2007 . 978-0-7486-2872-8 . 11 Jan 2023 . 637.
  16. Book: Slovak Review . Slovak Akademic Press . v. 1-2 . 1992 . 1335-0544 . 11 Jan 2023 .
  17. Book: The Living Church . Morehouse-Gorham Company . v. 131 . 1955 . 11 Jan 2023 . 17-PA26.

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