February 3, 1901

There is a biographical  sketch in the Paris Review interview which featured Rosamund Lehmann, (February 3, 1901 to March 12, 1990), and we excerpt:

'Rosamond Lehmann was born in ... Bourne End, Buckinghamshire. Her father, Rudolph Lehmann, was the editor of Punch,...He became a Liberal M.P. in 1906. Her mother, Alice Davis, was from Boston, Massachusetts. Rosamond was the second of their four children. .. The Lehmann family lived in grand Edwardian style in a large house on the river Thames, and the children were brought up by a staff of nannies, governesses, and tutors, only “coming down after tea” to see their parents.

'In 1919, Lehmann went as a scholar to Girton College, Cambridge, and obtained an honors degree in English. In 1924, she met and married Leslie Runciman, now Lord Runciman. The marriage was not a success, and they parted three years later. Meanwhile, Lehmann had written her first novel, Dusty Answer, an account of a young girl's first encounter with love. After an initial mixed reception, the novel became a bestseller.

'In 1928, Lehmann married Wogan Philipps, now Lord Milford, a Communist peer, and had a son and a daughter. Her second novel, A Note in Music, about two women locked in hopeless marriages in a northern town, was less warmly received. Undaunted, Lehmann went on to write Invitation to the Waltz, published in 1932, and The Weather in the Streets in 1936, both of which were instant bestsellers. In 1940, her private life was again shattered by the breakup of her second marriage.

'During World War II, Lehmann lived in the country with her two children and started a long and happy relationship with the poet Cecil Day Lewis. During this time, she contributed a series of highly popular short stories to her brother's magazine, New Writing. The stories were collected in The Gypsy's Baby in 1946. Her next novel was The Ballad and the Source in 1945, which was also successful. Her relationship with Day Lewis ended in 1949, and in 1953 she wrote what is perhaps her most successful novel, The Echoing Grove. In 1958, tragedy struck, with the death of her young daughter Sally, who had married the poet J. P. Cavanagh. Shattered by grief, Lehmann thought she could never write again. She became interested in spiritualism, and in 1967 wrote The Swan in the Evening, fragments of autobiography in which she describes her psychic experiences following the death of her daughter. In 1977, she wrote A Sea-Grape Tree, in which she introduces some of her new insights into psychic phenomena.
...
'[In her eighties Lehmann lived] alone in a small house in Kensington. Her great beauty—famous in youth and middle age—seem[ed] undiminished...Her diary ...[was] full with lunch and dinner dates, and a young BBC producer ...[was] at work on a documentary of her life and work. Lehmann ...[was] also vice-president of the College of Psychic Studies in London ...[and] she ...[was] active in PEN International...'

We appreciate this sample of Lehmann's fiction, from "A Dream of Winter."
...
‘"What’s the most important thing about a person?" she said.

‘"Dopey," said her brother. "What’s biting you?"

‘"Don’t you know?" said Jane. "Your heart. If it stops, you die. I can hear mine after that running."

‘"It won’t stop," said her mother.

‘"It will some day," said John. "It might stop tonight. Reminds me—" He fished in his pocket and drew out a dark object. "I brought up this tit to give it a last chance by your fire. It was at the back of the boiler, but the cats would keep prowling about. They got the pigeon. It must have been stiff eating." He examined the tit. "It’s alive!"

'He rushed with it to the fire and crouched down, holding it in his palms before the now leaping flames. "Its eyes opened. It’s fluttering."

Jane came and knelt beside him.

‘Isn’t it a sweet little tiny bird?’

'Suddenly it flew straight up out of his hands, dashed against the mantelpiece, fell down again upon the hearth-rug. They were all perfectly silent.

'After a moment his hand went out to pick it up again. Then it flew straight into the fire, and started to roast, to whirr and cheep over the coals.

'In a split second she was there, plunged in her hand, out again. Smell of burnt feathers, charred fragments flaking down. It was on the hearth-stone. Everybody stared.
Suddenly it revived, it began to stagger about. The tenacity of the life in its minute frame appalled her. Over the carpet it bounced, one wing burnt off, one leg shrivelled up under its breast, no tail; up and down, vigorously, round and about.

‘"Is it going to be alive?" said Jane.

‘"Yes,"’ said John coldly, heavily. "We can’t do anything about it now."’

The full text of this short story of Rosamund Lehmann's is available here.