Margaret Moore Kennedy (23 April 1896 – 31 July 1967) was an English novelist and playwright. Her most successful work, as a novel and as a play, was The Constant Nymph. She was a productive writer and several of her works were filmed. Three of her novels were reprinted in 2011.
Margaret Kennedy was born in Hyde Park Gate, London, the eldest of the four children of Charles Moore Kennedy (1857–1934), a barrister, and his wife Ellinor Edith Marwood (1861–1928). The novelist Joyce Cary was a cousin on her father's side.
She attended Cheltenham Ladies' College, where she began writing, and then went up to Somerville College, Oxford, in 1915 to read History. Other literary contemporaries at Somerville College included Winifred Holtby, Vera Brittain, Hilda Reid, Naomi Mitchison and Sylvia Thompson. She also became close friends with the Welsh author Flora Forster. Her first publication was a history book, A Century of Revolution (1922). Kennedy was married on 20 June 1925 to the barrister David Davies (1889–1964), who later became a county court judge and a national insurance commissioner. He was knighted in 1952. They had a son and two daughters, one of whom was the novelist Julia Birley,[1] born 13 May 1928 and author of at least 13 novels published between 1968 and 1985. The novelist Serena Mackesy is her granddaughter. Kennedy died at Flora Forster's house at Adderbury, Oxfordshire on 31 July 1967.[2]
Kennedy followed the stage success of The Constant Nymph (adapted in conjunction with Basil Dean) with three more co-written plays. The most successful was Escape Me Never (1934), adapting The Fool of the Family, which was also filmed twice.[9]
Of her post-war novels, The Feast (1950) introduces the disaster first and the characters who may or may not have perished in it afterwards, as in Thornton Wilder's The Bridge of San Luis Rey. The seaside hotel annihilated by the collapse of the cliff is replete with dysfunctional characters of all ages and sizes, so providing a fine balance of suspense, sympathy and even humour. Still, it works on other levels too. Her novelist granddaughter Serena Mackesy has called it "one of the cleverest bits of metaphor-working ever."[10] It was recently reprinted, as were Lucy Carmichael (1951) and The Midas Touch.[11] Her final novel, Not in the Calendar: The Story of a Friendship, involves a friendship between a daughter of a wealthy family and the deaf daughter of one of their servants.
^ODNB entry. A French translation entitled Tessa by Jean Giraudoux appeared in 1924: Retrieved 24 March 2011l.
^"The Constant Nymph (1928)". Internet Movie Database. Retrieved 23 March 2011.
^"The Constant Nymph (1933)". Internet Movie Database. Retrieved 23 March 2011.
^"The Constant Nymph (1938)". Internet Movie Database. Retrieved 23 March 2011.
^"The Constant Nymph (1943)". Internet Movie Database. Retrieved 23 March 2011.
^The Feast, by Margaret Kennedy Retrieved 15/1/2021.
^ODNB entry. IMDB: [1] (1935); Retrieved 24 March 2011. (1947).
^Mackesy's website: Retrieved 2 April 2011. Archived 27 October 2011 at the Wayback Machine
^As The Feast (London: Faber, 2011). ISBN 978-0-571-27810-7; Lucy Carmichael (London: Faber, 2011) ISBN 978-0-571-27799-5; The Midas Touch (London: Faber, 2011). ISBN 978-0-571-27526-7.
^"Special Collections". some.ox.ac.uk. Retrieved 28 August 2018.
^Details mainly from British Library Integrated Catalogue: Retrieved 9 April 2011. This includes works published as by Mrs. David Davies Kennedy. Other information: Retrieved 9 April 2011. The source is referenced.