Enid Bagnold

She was born in Rochester, Kent, daughter of Colonel Arthur Henry Bagnold and his wife, Ethel (née Alger), and brought up mostly in Jamaica. Her older brother was Ralph Bagnold. She attended art school in London, and then worked for Frank Harris, who became her lover.[1]

Enid Bagnold Age c. 25 by Maurice Asselin

During the First World War she became a nurse; she wrote critically of the hospital administration, and was dismissed as a result. After that she was a driver in France for the remainder of the war years. She wrote about her hospital experiences in A Diary Without Dates,[2] and about her experiences as a driver in The Happy Foreigner.[3][4]

In 1920, she married Sir Roderick Jones, chairman of Reuters, but continued to use her maiden name for her writing. They lived at North End House, Rottingdean, near Brighton (previously the home of Sir Edward Burne-Jones), the garden of which inspired her play The Chalk Garden. The Joneses' London house from 1928 until 1969, seven years after Sir Roderick's death, was No. 29 Hyde Park Gate, which meant that they were the neighbours for many of those years of Winston Churchill and Jacob Epstein.

The couple had four children. The eldest was Laurian, who illustrated two of Bagnold's books at a tender age. Their great-granddaughter is Samantha Cameron, wife of the former Prime Minister and Conservative Party leader David Cameron.[5]

Bagnold died in Rottingdean in 1981, aged 91, and is interred at St Margaret's churchyard there.[6]

• Arts Theater Prize for Poor Judas (1951)[7]
• Award of Merit Medal for The Chalk Garden (1956)[7]
• Prize from the Academy of Arts and Letters for The Chalk Garden (1956)[7]

Part of the former home of Enid Bagnold in Rottingdean

• A Diary Without Dates (1917)
• The Sailing Ships and other poems (1918)
• The Happy Foreigner (1920)
• Serena Blandish or the Difficulty of Getting Married (1924)
• Alice & Thomas & Jane (1930). Illustrated by Laurian Jones
• National Velvet (1935). Illustrated by Laurian Jones
• The Door of Life (1938)
• The Squire (1938), republished in 2013 by Persephone Books
• Lottie Dundass (1943, play)
• Two Plays (1944)
• The Loved and Envied (1951)
• Theatre (1951)
• Poor Judas (1951, play)
• Gertie (1952 play)
• The Girl's Journey (1954)
• The Chalk Garden (1955, play)
• The Last Joke (1960, play)
• The Chinese Prime Minister (1964, play)
• A Matter of Gravity (original title Call Me Jacky; 1967, play)
• Autobiography (1969)
• Four Plays (1970)
• Poems (1978)
• Letters to Frank Harris & Other Friends (1980)
• Early Poems (1987)

• Works by Enid Bagnold at Project Gutenberg
• Works by or about Enid Bagnold at Internet Archive
• Works by Enid Bagnold at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks)
• Anne Sebba (1986), Enid Bagnold, The Authorised Biography ISBN 978-0297789918
• Lenemaja Friedman (1986), Enid Bagnold ISBN 978-0805769227

• Enid Bagnold at the Internet Broadway Database
• A Diary Without Dates (1917) archived at the Internet Archive
• Selected performances, Theatre Archive University of Bristol; accessed 28 September 2014.
• Some context of the interwar pony story in which Bagnold's National Velvet was conceived, jeunessejournal.com; accessed 28 September 2014.
• Profile, spartacus-educational.com; accessed 28 September 2014.
• Enid Bagnold Papers. General Collection, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library.