 | |
| Author | Margaret Kennedy |
|---|---|
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Novel |
| Publisher | Heinemann |
Publication date | 1924 |
| Media type | Print (Hardback & 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 falls in love with a family friend, who eventually marries her cousin. 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." [1] Sayers includes a positive mention by two characters in her 1930 epistolary novel, The Documents in the Case . [2]
The character and appearance of the composer Lewis Dodd was based on the artist Henry Lamb, who was a gifted pianist. [3] 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. [4] 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. [5]
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. [6] The play was performed on the London stage in 1926 and featured Noël Coward and Edna Best. [7]
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. [8] It was adapted again in 1933 by Dorothy Farnum and directed by Dean. It featured Victoria Hopper, Brian Aherne and Leonora Corbett. [8] 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.
Miss Jane Marple is a fictional character in Agatha Christie's crime novels and short stories. Miss Marple lives in the village of St. Mary Mead and acts as an amateur consulting detective. Often characterized as an elderly spinster, she is one of Christie's best-known characters and has been portrayed numerous times on screen. Her first appearance was in a short story published in The Royal Magazine in December 1927, "The Tuesday Night Club", which later became the first chapter of The Thirteen Problems (1932). Her first appearance in a full-length novel was in The Murder at the Vicarage in 1930, and her last appearance was in Sleeping Murder in 1976.
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 adapted into a 2003 film. 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).
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Dorothy Gale is a fictional character created by American author L. Frank Baum as the protagonist in many of his Oz novels. She first appears in Baum's classic 1900 children's novel The Wonderful Wizard of Oz and reappears in most of its sequels. In addition, she is the main character in various adaptations, notably the classic 1939 film adaptation of the novel, The Wizard of Oz.
Mabel Lilian Poulton was an English film actress, popular in Britain during the era of silent films.
Thérèse Raquin is an 1868 novel by French writer Émile Zola, first published in serial form in the literary magazine L'Artiste in 1867. It was Zola's third novel, though the first to earn wide fame. The novel's adultery and murder were considered scandalous and famously described as "putrid" in a review in the newspaper Le Figaro.
Basil Herbert Dean CBE was an English actor, writer, producer and director in the theatre and in cinema. He founded the Liverpool Repertory Company in 1911 and in the First World War, after organising unofficial entertainments for his comrades in the army, he was appointed do so officially. After the war he produced and directed mostly in the West End. He staged premieres of plays by writers including J. M. Barrie, Noël Coward, John Galsworthy, Harley Granville-Barker and Somerset Maugham. He produced nearly 40 films, and directed 16, mainly in the 1930s, with stars including Gracie Fields.
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.
Mary Poppins is a fictional character and the eponymous protagonist of P. L. Travers' books of the same name along with all of their adaptations. A magical English nanny, she blows in on the east wind and arrives at the Banks home at Number 17 Cherry Tree Lane, London, where she is given charge of the Banks children and teaches them valuable lessons with a magical touch. Travers gives Poppins the accent and vocabulary of a real London nanny: cockney base notes overlaid with a strangled gentility.
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.
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 Wizard of Oz is a musical commissioned by The Muny based on the 1900 novel The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum and the 1939 film, The Wizard of Oz, using the film's songs by Harold Arlen and E. Y. Harburg. The book of the musical is by Frank Gabrielson, who would later write an adaptation of The Marvelous Land of Oz (1960) for Shirley Temple (1960).
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.
Escape Me Never is a 1947 American melodrama film directed by Peter Godfrey, and starring Errol Flynn, Ida Lupino, Eleanor Parker, and Gig Young.
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.
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".