Francesca Allinson

Last updated • 2 min readFrom Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia
Francesca Allinson
Born
Enid Ellen Pulvermacher Allinson

20 August 1902
Died7 April 1945 (aged 42)
Occupation(s)Writer, musician, musicologist, puppeteer.
Notable workA Childhood (1937)
Relatives Thomas Allinson (father); Adrian Allinson (brother)

Francesca Allinson (born Enid Ellen Pulvermacher Allinson; 20 August 1902 – 7 April 1945) was an English writer, musician and puppeteer. [1] She was the youngest child of the pioneering physician and wholemeal bread entrepreneur Dr Thomas Allinson, and sister of the artist Adrian Allinson. [2]

Biography

Allinson wrote the semi-autobiographical book A Childhood which was published by Hogarth Press in 1937. [3]

She was a musician, a puppeteer, a conductor with the London Labour Choral Union, [4] and wrote extensively on the origins of English folk song, clashing with the composer Ralph Vaughan Williams on the subject. [5] She published editions of Henry Purcell and Orlando Gibbons and her unpublished manuscript on the Irish origins of English folksong is held at the Vaughan Williams Memorial Library. [1]

Allinson was a pacifist and established a community farm in East Grinstead, Surrey, where conscientious objectors worked during World War II. [6]

Her circle of friends and collaborators included the composer Alan Bush, artists Enid Marx and Wilfred Franks, music critic John Amis and poet Douglas Newton. [7] She was a close friend of the composer Michael Tippett who dedicated two of his compositions to her, Piano Sonata no.1 (1936–38) and The Heart's Assurance (1950-51); the latter was written in response to Allinson's death. [8] [9] In old age Tippett was asked if he had ever been close to a woman, he replied, "Oh yes. Indeed. All through my life, Francesca Allinson, who I was closer to than almost anybody. It was a strange, tender, extremely tender, gentle relationship." [10]

Through much of the 1930s Allinson was involved in a same-sex relationship with Judith Wogan, [11] a producer of plays and owner of the Grafton Theatre on London's Tottenham Court Road. [12]

Allinson died in 1945 by suicide by drowning in the River Stour in Clare, Suffolk. [1] [13] She left suicide notes for both Tippett and Wogan, the one left for Tippett included the following:

"Darling - it's no good - I can't hold on any longer. One has to be a better and stronger character than me to be able to face a life of individualism... I have thought endlessly about whether it is wrong - and perhaps it is. But one would have to feel very sure about its wrongness to go on existing as a helpless unhelping unit in the terrible post-war years that are to come... If we have to live many lives, may I live near those I now love again and make a better job of living... I can't live without the warm enfolding love of another person - and in this life I have smashed up the chance of that (in my love too). Darling forgive me. I am so tired and have been for so many years. All my love, Fresc." [14]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Polymath</span> Individual whose knowledge spans a substantial number of subjects

A polymath is an individual whose knowledge spans a substantial number of subjects, known to draw on complex bodies of knowledge to solve specific problems.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sussex</span> Historic county of England

Sussex is a historic county in South East England that is bounded to the west by Hampshire, north by Surrey, northeast by Kent, south by the English Channel, and is divided for many purposes into the ceremonial counties of West Sussex and East Sussex.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Alan Bush</span> British composer, pianist, conductor, teacher and political activist (1900–1995)

Alan Dudley Bush was a British composer, pianist, conductor, teacher and political activist. A committed communist, his uncompromising political beliefs were often reflected in his music. He composed prolifically across a range of genres, but struggled through his lifetime for recognition from the British musical establishment, which largely ignored his works.

The University of Brighton is a public university based on four campuses in Brighton and Eastbourne on the south coast of England. Its roots can be traced back to 1858 when the Brighton School of Art was opened in the Royal Pavilion. It achieved university status in 1992.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Michael Tippett</span> English composer (1905–1998)

Sir Michael Kemp Tippett was an English composer who rose to prominence during and immediately after the Second World War. In his lifetime he was sometimes ranked with his contemporary Benjamin Britten as one of the leading British composers of the 20th century. Among his best-known works are the oratorio A Child of Our Time, the orchestral Fantasia Concertante on a Theme of Corelli, and the opera The Midsummer Marriage.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">John Wilson Croker</span> 19th-century Anglo-Irish politician and statesman

John Wilson Croker was an Anglo-Irish statesman and author.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">David Garnett</span> British writer and publisher (1892–1981)

David Garnett was an English writer and publisher. As a child, he had a cloak made of rabbit skin and thus received the nickname "Bunny", by which he was known to friends and intimates all his life.

John Alexander Guy is a British historian and biographer.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Modest Ilyich Tchaikovsky</span> Russian writer

Modest Ilyich Tchaikovsky was a Russian dramatist, opera librettist and translator.

<i>A Child of Our Time</i> Oratorio composed by Michael Tippett

A Child of Our Time is a secular oratorio by the British composer Michael Tippett (1905–1998), who also wrote the libretto. Composed between 1939 and 1941, it was first performed at the Adelphi Theatre, London, on 19 March 1944. The work was inspired by events that affected Tippett profoundly: the assassination in 1938 of a German diplomat by a young Jewish refugee, and the Nazi government's reaction in the form of a violent pogrom against its Jewish population: Kristallnacht. Tippett's oratorio deals with these incidents in the context of the experiences of oppressed people generally, and carries a strongly pacifist message of ultimate understanding and reconciliation. The text's recurrent themes of shadow and light reflect the Jungian psychoanalysis which Tippett underwent in the years immediately before writing the work.

The Elizabeth Longford Prize for Historical Biography was established in 2003 in memory of Elizabeth Longford (1906-2002), the British author, biographer and historian. The £5,000 prize is awarded annually for a historical biography published in the preceding year.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Eastbourne</span> Town in East Sussex, England

Eastbourne is a town and seaside resort in East Sussex, on the south coast of England, 19 miles (31 km) east of Brighton and 54 miles (87 km) south of London. It is also a local government district with borough status. Eastbourne is immediately east of Beachy Head, the highest chalk sea cliff in Great Britain and part of the larger Eastbourne Downland Estate.

The historic county of Sussex in southern England has a rich musical heritage that encompasses the genres of folk, classical and rock and popular music amongst others. With the unbroken survival of its indigenous music, Sussex was at the forefront of the English folk music revivals of the 19th and 20th centuries. Many classical composers have found inspiration in Sussex, and the county continues to have a thriving musical scene across the musical genres. In Sussex by the Sea, the county has its own unofficial anthem.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Joseph Fischhof</span> Pianist, composer, professor (1804–1857)

Joseph Fischhof was a Czech-Austrian pianist, composer and professor at the Vienna Conservatory of Music, belonging to the Romantic school.

Peter Frederick Clarke, is an English historian.

Wilfred Florestan Franks (1908–2003) was a British artist, designer, sculptor, dancer and actor. He married Daphne Rudd in 1951

The Cleveland Work Camps in the United Kingdom were known locally as "Heartbreak Hill". They were a series of short events, staged in the East Cleveland iron-stone mining villages of Boosbeck and Margrove Park, which ran from 1932 to 1938 with the aim of helping to alleviate the poverty which these mining communities experienced as a result of pit closures during the Great Depression. Notable figures involved with establishing the scheme were the aristocratic land owner Major James Pennyman and his wife Ruth Pennyman, an idealistic young Cambridge University graduate called Rolf Gardiner, Manchester Guardian Journalist David Ayerst and local trade unions.

Philip G. Ziegler is a Canadian-born theologian who holds a personal chair as Professor in Christian Dogmatics at the University of Aberdeen. He is author of numerous scholarly articles, books, and has led various research projects within contemporary dogmatics, the theology of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, as well as theological reflection on New Testament apocalyptic. He maintains a personal website: Theologia Borealis.

Ruth Pennyman was an English artist, designer, community organiser and theatrical producer. She was the wife of aristocratic land-owner Major James Pennyman of Ormesby Hall in Middlesbrough.

Sussex Academic Press, founded in 1994, is a publishing company based in Eastbourne, East Sussex, United Kingdom. It initially specialised in Middle East studies.

References

  1. 1 2 3 "Francesca Allinson | Modernist Archives Publishing Project". www.modernistarchives.com. Retrieved 21 June 2020.
  2. ↑ Southworth, Helen (2017). Fresca A Life in the Making. A Biographer's Quest for a Forgotten Bloomsbury Polymath. Eastbourne: SUSSEX ACADEMIC PRESS. p. 13. ISBN   9781845198213.
  3. ↑ See The Library of Leonard and Virginia Woolf: A Short-title Catalog Compiled and edited by Julia King and Laila Miletic-Vejzovic ; foreword by Laila Miletic-Vejzovic; introduction by Diane F. Gillespie. Washington State University Press, 2003. ISBN   0-87422-270-2.
  4. ↑ Southworth, Helen (2017). Fresca A Life in the Making. A Biographer's Quest for a Forgotten Bloomsbury Polymath. Eastbourne: SUSSEX ACADEMIC PRESS. p. 84. ISBN   9781845198213.
  5. ↑ Southworth, Helen (2017). Fresca A Life in the Making. A Biographer's Quest for a Forgotten Bloomsbury Polymath. Eastbourne: SUSSEX ACADEMIC PRESS. pp. 267–278. ISBN   9781845198213.
  6. ↑ Southworth, Helen (2017). Fresca A Life in the Making. A Biographer's Quest for a Forgotten Bloomsbury Polymath. Eastbourne: SUSSEX ACADEMIC PRESS. p. 178. ISBN   9781845198213.
  7. ↑ Southworth, Helen (2017). Fresca A Life in the Making. A Biographer's Quest for a Forgotten Bloomsbury Polymath. Eastbourne: SUSSEX ACADEMIC PRESS. pp. 126–130. ISBN   9781845198213.
  8. ↑ Kemp, Ian (1984). Tippett The Composer and His Music. Oxford: Oxford University Press. pp. 499–500. ISBN   0 19 282017 6.
  9. ↑ Berkeley, Michael (25 August 2005). "Joyful oblivion". The Guardian. ISSN   0261-3077 . Retrieved 21 June 2020.
  10. ↑ Soden. Michael Tippett The Biography. Weidenfeld & Nicolson. p. 338. ISBN   978 1 4746 0602 8.
  11. ↑ Soden, Oliver (2019). Michael Tippett The Biography. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson. p. 227. ISBN   978 1 4746 0602 8.
  12. ↑ Southworth, Helen (2017). Fresca A Life in the Making. A Biographer's Quest for a Forgotten Bloomsbury Polymath. Eastbourne: SUSSEX ACADEMIC PRESS. pp. 124–126. ISBN   9781845198213.
  13. ↑ "Fresca". www.sussex-academic.com. Retrieved 21 June 2020.
  14. ↑ Tippett, Michael. Those Twentieth Century Blues. Hutchinson. ISBN   0091753074.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.