 | |
| Author | Margaret Kennedy |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Genre | Novel |
| Publisher | Heinemann |
Publication date | 1924 |
| Publication place | United Kingdom |
| Media type | Print (Hardback and paperback) |
| Pages | 344 pp |
| Followed by | The Fool of the Family |
The Constant Nymph is a 1924 novel by Margaret Kennedy. It tells how a teenage girl, Tessa Sanger, falls in love with a family friend, who eventually marries her cousin. [1] It explores the protagonists' complex family histories, focusing on class, education and creativity.
The novel sold well from its first appearance, becoming the first novel of a genre sometimes called "Bohemian". Much of its success was due to its then-shocking sexual content, describing scenes of adolescent sexuality and of noble savagery in the Austrian Tyrol.
There is a complimentary allusion to the novel in the 1934 detective story The Nine Tailors by Dorothy L. Sayers. Fifteen-year-old Hilary tells her father she aspires to write novels: "Best sellers. The sort that everybody goes potty over. Not just bosh ones, but like The Constant Nymph." [2] Sayers includes a positive mention by two characters in her 1930 epistolary novel, The Documents in the Case . [3]
The character and appearance of the composer Lewis Dodd was based on the artist Henry Lamb, who was a gifted pianist. [4] Kennedy's cousin George was one of Lamb's oldest friends. Attributes of Albert Sanger were taken from Augustus John, particular the artists' colony he set up in 1911 at Alderney Manor. [5] Kennedy may have been trying to protect herself against accusations of using her friends as models by transferring to both of them the talents of musicians rather than painters. [6]
Margaret Kennedy and Basil Dean adapted The Constant Nymph for a three-act play that was published by Doubleday, Page and Company (Garden City, N.Y.) in 1926. A differently treated, second stage adaptation of the play was published by William Heinemann (London) in 1926. [7] The play was performed on the London stage in 1926 and featured Noël Coward and Edna Best. [8]
The novel was first adapted as a silent film in 1928 by Adrian Brunel and Alma Reville and directed by Brunel and Basil Dean. This version starred Ivor Novello, Mabel Poulton and Benita Hume. [9] It was adapted again in 1933 by Dorothy Farnum and directed by Dean. It featured Victoria Hopper, Brian Aherne and Leonora Corbett. [9] A third film adaptation in 1943 featured Charles Boyer, Joan Fontaine, and Alexis Smith. It was adapted by Kathryn Scola and directed by Edmund Goulding.
East Lynne is an 1861 English sensation novel by Ellen Wood, writing as Mrs. Henry Wood. A Victorian-era bestseller, it is remembered chiefly for its elaborate and implausible plot centering on infidelity and double identities. There have been numerous stage and film adaptations.
Dorothy Gladys "Dodie" Smith was an English novelist and playwright. She is best known for writing I Capture the Castle (1948) and the children's novel The Hundred and One Dalmatians (1956). Other works include Dear Octopus (1938) and The Starlight Barking (1967). The Hundred and One Dalmatians was adapted into a 1961 animated film and a 1996 live-action film, both produced by Disney. Her novel I Capture the Castle was voted number 82 as "one of the nation's 100 best-loved novels" by the British public as part of the BBC's The Big Read (2003), and was adapted into a film released the same year.
Alma Lucy Reville, Lady Hitchcock was an English screenwriter and film editor. She was the wife of film director Alfred Hitchcock. She collaborated on scripts for her husband's films, including Shadow of a Doubt, Suspicion, and The Lady Vanishes, as well as scripts for other directors, including Henrik Galeen, Maurice Elvey, and Berthold Viertel.
Joy in the Morning is a 1965 American romance film starring Richard Chamberlain and Yvette Mimieux and directed by Alex Segal. Adapted from the 1963 novel of the same name by Betty Smith, the film tells the story of a young newlywed couple, Carl and Annie Brown, who marry against their parents' wishes while Carl is still in law school and struggle to maintain their relationship.
Henry Taylor Lamb was an Australian-born British painter. A follower of Augustus John, Lamb was a founder member of the Camden Town Group in 1911 and of the London Group in 1913.
Margaret Moore Kennedy 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.
The Constant Nymph is a 1928 British silent film drama, directed by Adrian Brunel and starring Ivor Novello and Mabel Poulton. This was the first film adaptation of the 1924 best-selling and controversial novel The Constant Nymph by Margaret Kennedy and the 1926 stage play version written by Kennedy and Basil Dean. The theme of adolescent sexuality reportedly discomfited the British film censors, until they were reassured that lead actress Poulton was in fact in her 20s.
Frederick Hugh Herbert was a playwright, screenwriter, novelist, short story writer, and infrequent film director.
Tessa is a play written in 1934 by French dramatist Jean Giraudoux. It is a translation and adaptation of a 1926 stage version by Margaret Kennedy and Basil Dean of the former's 1924 novel The Constant Nymph.
The Constant Nymph is a 1943 romantic drama film starring Charles Boyer, Joan Fontaine, Alexis Smith, Brenda Marshall, Charles Coburn, May Whitty, and Peter Lorre with a famous score by Erich Wolfgang Korngold. It was adapted by Kathryn Scola from the 1924 novel of the same name by Margaret Kennedy and the 1926 play by Kennedy and Basil Dean and directed by Edmund Goulding.
Adrian Brunel was an English film director and screenwriter. Brunel's directorial career started in the silent era, and reached its peak in the latter half of the 1920s. His surviving work from the 1920s, both full-length feature films and shorts, is highly regarded by silent film historians for its distinctive innovation, sophistication and wit. With the arrival of talkies, Brunel's career ground to a halt and he was absent from the screen for several years before returning in the mid-1930s with a flurry of quota quickie productions, the majority of which are now classed as lost. Brunel's last credit as director was in a 1940 comedy film, although he worked for a few years more as a "fixer-up" for films directed or produced by friends in the industry.
The Constant Nymph may refer to:
The Constant Nymph is a 1933 British drama film directed by Basil Dean and starring Victoria Hopper, Brian Aherne and Leonora Corbett. It is an adaptation of the 1924 novel The Constant Nymph by Margaret Kennedy and the 1926 stage play adaptation written by Kennedy and Dean. Dean tried to persuade Novello to reprise his appearance from the 1928 silent version The Constant Nymph but was turned down and cast Aherne in the part instead. The film is set in Tyrol, western Austria. Previously filmed in 1928, the sentimental Margaret Kennedy novel The Constant Nymph was sumptuously remade by Gaumont-British Picture Corporation in 1933.
Escape Me Never is a 1947 American melodrama film directed by Peter Godfrey, and starring Errol Flynn, Ida Lupino, Eleanor Parker, and Gig Young.
Escape Me Never is a 1935 British drama film directed by Paul Czinner, produced by Herbert Wilcox, and starring Elisabeth Bergner, Hugh Sinclair and Griffith Jones. The score is by William Walton with orchestration by Hyam Greenbaum. Bergner was nominated for the Oscar for Best Actress for her performance, but lost to Bette Davis. British readers of Film Weekly magazine voted the 1935 Best Performance in a British Movie to her. The film is an adaptation of the play Escape Me Never by Margaret Kennedy, which was based upon her 1930 novel The Fool of the Family. That book was a sequel to The Constant Nymph, which was also about the Sanger family of musical geniuses, but there is a disjunct among the books and the films: the Sanger brothers are never mentioned in the 1943 film version of The Constant Nymph. Another film adaptation of Escape Me Never was made in 1947 by Warner Bros.
The Constant Nymph is a play based on the 1924 novel of the same name by Margaret Kennedy. The stage version, adapted by Kennedy and the director Basil Dean, was first performed in London in 1926, starring Noël Coward, Edna Best and Cathleen Nesbitt. It portrays the love of two women for a young composer, and the conflicts that arise. The tragic ending has the younger of the two – a teenager – die of heart failure.
The Ladies of Lyndon is a 1923 novel by the British writer Margaret Kennedy. Her debut novel, it was rell-received and she followed it the next year with her breakthrough novel The Constant Nymph.
Red Sky at Morning is a 1927 novel by the British writer Margaret Kennedy, her third. Her previous novel The Constant Nymph had been a major critical and commercial success, and it was felt that her new novel failed to recapture this. Sylvia Lynd reviewed it saying "Few novels have so exquisite a forerunner as The Constant Nymph with which to compete. Compared with that, Red Sky at Morning, it must be admitted, is far less moving, less inevitable in the progress of its events, and less well stocked with fascinating characters. Compared with any ordinary novel, however, it is very good indeed - finely wrought, just, sensible, perceptive and witty".
Return I Dare Not is a 1931 novel by the British writer Margaret Kennedy. It was her fifth novel. Although it sold well, it did not match the success of The Constant Nymph and its sequel The Fool of the Family
The Fool of the Family is a 1930 novel by the British writer Margaret Kennedy. It is the sequel to her 1924 bestseller The Constant Nymph.