13 Facts About Ivy Compton-Burnett

Dame Ivy Compton-Burnett, was an English novelist, published in the original editions as I Compton-Burnett.

Ivy Compton-Burnett was awarded the 1955 James Tait Black Memorial Prize for her novel Mother and Son.

Ivy Compton-Burnett's works consist mainly of dialogue and focus on family life among the late Victorian or Edwardian upper middle class.

Ivy Compton-Burnett was born in Pinner, Middlesex, on 5 June 1884, as the seventh of twelve children of a well-known homeopathic physician and prolific medical author, Dr James Compton-Burnett by his second wife, Katharine, daughter of civil engineer, surveyor and architect Rowland Rees, who was Mayor of Dover.

Ivy Compton-Burnett was educated at home with two brothers until the age of 14.

Ivy Compton-Burnett's mother sent all her stepchildren away to boarding-school as soon as possible.

Ivy Compton-Burnett successfully managed the family trust, consisting of both parents' estates and largely taking the form of tenanted property, after her mother's death.

Ivy Compton-Burnett spent much of her life as a companion to Margaret Jourdain, a leading authority and writer on the decorative arts and the history of furniture, who shared the author's Kensington flat from 1919.

Garland described this as "one of the happiest things in a long and troubled life" and Ivy Compton-Burnett was "besotted with Madge".

Ivy Compton-Burnett was appointed a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1967.

Ivy Compton-Burnett held no religious beliefs; she was a "fierce Victorian atheist".

Ivy Compton-Burnett died at her Kensington home on 27 August 1969 and was cremated at Putney Vale Crematorium.

Ivy Compton-Burnett's fiction relies heavily on formal dialogue, and demands constant attention on the reader's part: there are instances in her work where important information is casually mentioned in a half sentence, and her use of punctuation is deliberately perfunctory.