David Garnett

Born 9 March 1892 in Brighton, David Garnett was a prolific writer best known for his satirical fantasies Lady Into Fox (1922), the tale of a man whose wife is suddenly transformed into a fox, and A Man in the Zoo (1924), concerned with a man who is accepted by the London Zoo to be exhibited as an example of Homo sapiens. Later novels, not fantastic, were not so successful. In The Golden Echo (1953), The Flowers of the Forest (1955), and The Familiar Faces (1962), Garnett described his memories of the English literary coterie—including the Bloomsbury group—of which he was a member dring the period of World War I and the 1920s. Much of what he described was shocking to the general public, as was the fully nude photograph included in one edition. Great Friends: Portraits of Seventeen Writers (1980) continued in the same vein. Garnett’s novel Aspects of Love (1955) was not very popular upon publication but has since been made famous due to its adaptation by Andrew Lloyd Webber into a musical in 1989. Garnett’s other novels are Two by Two (1963) and A Clean Slate (1971). He edited several collections of correspondence, including The Letters of T. E. Lawrence (1938) and Carrington: Letters and Extracts from Her Diaries (1978). Garnett died on 17 February 1981 at Le Verger Charry, Montcuq, France.

bloomsbury    classic    lgbt    literary