Eliot Bliss was a Jamaican-born English novelist and poet of Anglo-Irish descent, whose literary friendships encompassed Anna Wickham, Dorothy Richardson, Jean Rhys, Romer Wilson and Vita Sackville-West.
10 Facts About Eliot Bliss
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Eliot Bliss was born as Eileen Norah Lees Bliss in Kingston, Jamaica on June 12,1903 to Eva Lees and Captain John Plomer Bliss, an officer in the West Indian Regiment of the British Army.
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Eliot Bliss returned in 1923 to Jamaica for two years, a period that would provide inspiration for her second and last novel.
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Eliot Bliss then settled permanently in England and gained a diploma in journalism from University College, London.
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Over subsequent years Eliot Bliss held various jobs in publishing and made friends with other women writers, notably fellow novelists Romer Wilson, who gave her financial support while she wrote her first novel, and Vita Sackville-West, who helped find a publisher for Luminous Isle.
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Eliot Bliss's relations with the Australian-born poet Anna Wickham are said to have been intimate.
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Eliot Bliss lived as a companion for over half a century with Patricia Allan-Burns, an artist, in Bishop's Stortford, Hertfordshire, where she died in 1990.
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Each of Eliot Bliss's two published novels can be classed as a bildungsroman.
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The poems of Eliot Bliss were not found until 2004, in the home she had shared with Allan-Burns.
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The papers of Eliot Bliss are held at the McFarlin Library at the University of Tulsa.