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Olivia Mary Manning CBE (2 March 1908 – 23 July 1980) was a British novelist, poet, writer and reviewer. Her fiction and non-fiction, frequently detailing journeys and personal odysseys, were principally set in England, Ireland, Europe and the Middle East. She often wrote from her personal experience, though her books also demonstrate strengths in imaginative writing. Her books are widely admired for her artistic eye and vivid descriptions of place. Manning's youth was divided between Portsmouth and Ireland, giving her what she described as "the usual Anglo-Irish sense of belonging nowhere". She attended art school, and moved to London, where her first serious novel, ''The Wind Changes,'' was published in 1937. In August 1939 she married R. D. Smith ("Reggie"), a British Council lecturer posted in Bucharest, Romania, and subsequently in Greece, Egypt and Palestine as the Nazis overran Eastern Europe. Her experiences formed the basis for her best known work, the six novels making up ''The Balkan Trilogy'' and ''The Levant Trilogy'', known collectively as ''Fortunes of War''. The overall quality of her output was considered uneven by critics, but this series, published between 1960 and 1980, was described by Anthony Burgess as "the finest fictional record of the war produced by a British writer". Manning returned to London after the war and lived there until her death, writing poetry, short stories, novels, non-fiction, reviews, and drama for the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC). Both Manning and her husband had affairs, but they never contemplated divorce. Her relationships with writers such as Stevie Smith and Iris Murdoch were difficult, as an insecure Manning was jealous of their greater success. Her constant grumbling about all manner of subjects is reflected in her nickname, "Olivia Moaning", but Reggie never wavered in his role as his wife's principal supporter and encourager, confident that her talent would ultimately be recognised. As she had feared, real fame only came after her death in 1980, when an adaptation of ''Fortunes of War'' was televised in 1987. Manning's books have received limited critical attention; as during her life, opinions are divided, particularly about her characterisation and portrayal of other cultures. Her works tend to minimise issues of gender, and are not easily classified as feminist literature. Nevertheless, recent scholarship has highlighted Manning's importance as a woman writer of war fiction and of the British Empire in decline. Her works are critical of war, racism, colonialism and imperialism, and examine themes of displacement and physical and emotional alienation. ==Early years== Olivia Manning was born in North End, Portsmouth on 2 March 1908.〔Some sources give her year of birth as 1911, possibly due to Manning's well-known obfuscations of her age. The Braybrooke and Braybrooke biography and the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography both give the 1908 date. 〕〔 Her father, Oliver Manning, was a naval officer who rose from naval trainee to lieutenant-commander despite a lack of formal schooling. At the age of 45, while visiting the port of Belfast, he met Olivia Morrow, a publican's daughter fourteen years his junior; they married less than a month later in December 1904, in the Presbyterian church in her home town of Bangor, County Down. Manning adored her lively, handsome, womanising father who entertained others by singing Gilbert and Sullivan and reciting poetry he had memorised during long sea voyages. In contrast, her mother was bossy and domineering, with a "mind as rigid as cast-iron", and there were constant marital disputes. The initially warm relationship between mother and daughter became strained after the birth of Manning's brother Oliver in 1913; delicate and frequently ill, he was the centre of his mother's attention, much to the displeasure of Manning, who made several childish attempts to harm him. This unhappy, insecure childhood left a lasting mark on her work and personality.〔〔 Manning was educated privately at a small dame school before moving to the north of Ireland in 1916, the first of several extended periods spent there while her father was at sea. In Bangor she attended Bangor Presbyterian School, and while in Portsmouth Lyndon House School, and subsequently Portsmouth Grammar School, developing, as she recalled, "the usual Anglo-Irish sense of belonging nowhere".〔 Schoolmates described her as shy and prone to tantrums; her tendency to tell boastful tall-tales about her family led to ostracism by her peers. Supported by her father, Manning read and wrote extensively, preferring novels, especially those by H. Rider Haggard. Her mother discouraged such pursuits, and confiscated material she thought unsuitable; when she found her daughter reading the ''Times Literary Supplement'' she scolded that "young men do not like women who read papers like that", and that Manning should focus on marketable job skills, such as typing. Indeed, when financial circumstances forced Manning to leave school at sixteen, she worked as a typist, and spent some time as a junior in a beauty salon. A talented artist, she took evening classes at the Portsmouth Municipal School of Art, where a fellow student described her as intellectual and aloof.〔 In May 1928, she had a painting selected for an exhibition at Southsea, and was subsequently offered a one-woman show of her works. Manning seemed to be poised for a career as an artist, but she had meanwhile continued her interest in literature, and at the age of twenty determined instead to be a writer. Her artist's eye is apparent in her later intense descriptions of landscapes.〔 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Olivia Manning」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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