Journey from the North: A Memoir

(Paperback)

Available Formats

Publishing Details

Classifications

Physical Properties

Description

After a lifetime of writing a novel every year, Storm Jameson turned to memoir with the ambition 'to write without lying'. The result was an extraordinary reckoning with how she had lived: her childhood in Whitby, shadowed by a tempestuous, dissatisfied mother; an early, unhappy marriage and her decision to leave her young son behind while she worked in London; a tenaciously pursued literary career,
always marked by the struggle to make money; and her lifelong political activism, including as the first female president of English PEN, helping refugees escape Nazi Germany.

In a richly ironic, conversational voice, Jameson tells of the great figures she knew and events she witnessed: encounters with H.G. Wells and Rose Macaulay, and travels across Europe as fascism was rising. Throughout, she writes with electric candour and immediacy about her own motivations and psychology.

Reissued with an introduction by Vivian Gornick, Journey from the North is one of the great literary memoirs: an uncommonly vivid account of a woman making a life for herself through the great shocks of the twentieth century.

Reviews

'A fascinating life story, told with passion, clarity and a fierce intelligence. Journey from the North is a wonderful book, a literary autobiography that is also a compelling chronicle of twentieth-century life' - Sarah Waters

'When Storm Jameson set out to write a memoir, the door of her safe opened wide, and she found literary gold in it' - Vivian Gornick

'Has the total honesty of the best autobiography' - Guardian

'Stops you in your tracks. I would like to persuade everyone to read it' - Sunday Times

'Her frank voice is as relevant today as ever it was in her own time - and it may still speak to many of our own anxieties around freedom, democracy and the future of liberal thought' - TLS

Author Bio

Margaret 'Storm' Jameson (1891-1986) was an English journalist and author. Born and raised in Whitby, she gained a scholarship to study English at the University of Leeds. After graduating with a First-Class degree, she moved to London where she became active in politics and began to write. Jameson remained committed to politics and literature throughout her life: she published a total of forty-five novels, as well as criticism, short stories and innumerable political articles; she was also the first female president of the British section of International PEN. In later life, she turned to writing her memoirs and produced the two volumes of Journey from the North, initially published in 1969 and 1970. Jameson died in 1986 at the age of ninety-five.