Some biographies/autobiographies featuring life in St John’s Wood :
A House in St John’s Wood Matthew Spender 2015
Spam Tomorrow Verily Anderson
Spilling the Beans Clarissa Dickson Wright 2007
Tempestuous Petticoats Clare Leighton 1947
Southwards from Swiss Cottage Beatrice Curtis Brown 1947
Reminiscences Edmund Yates
Slipstream Elizabeth Jane Howard
Diaries of George Orwell
London Adventurer Arthur Machin
Boys from the Wood (available from Amazon) John Simons
Boys from the Wood Part Two John Simons (E-Book on Amazon)
Drawn from memory Ernest Shepard
and some of the novels and short stories:
The Young Duke Benjamin Disraeli 1828
Man of Property John Galsworthy
Woman in White Wilkie Collins 1859
A House in the Park Ronald Fraser 1937
Forlorn sunset Michael Sadleir 1947
The Unclassed George Gissing
The Vault Ruth Rendell 2010
The Keys of the Street Ruth Rendell
The dilemma Penny Vincenzi
The hurt runner John Symonds
Making of Henry Howard Jacobson
Soul of kindness Elizabeth Taylor
Small House at Allington Anthony Trollope
Call It a Day (play) Dodie Smith 1935
Song of the Shirt (poem) Thomas Hood
To the Wood no more Ernest Raymond 1954
The Tragic Muse Henry James 1890
A scandal in Bohemia Arthur Conan Doyle
Murder in St John’s Wood E C Lorac
Bingo and the little woman P G Wodehouse 1925
Poor relations Compton Mackenzie 1910
The Cazalet chronicles Elizabeth Jane Howard
The Moving Toyshop Edmund Crispin, (pseud., Robert Bruce Montgomery) 1946
Adventure of the Italian Nobleman Agatha Christie 1924
Bliss Katherine Mansfield 1918
Some historical overviews:
St John’s Wood Alan Montgomery Eyre 1913
St John’s Wood & Maida Vale Past Richard Tames 1998
Cottages and Villas – the birth of the Garden Suburb Mireille Galinou 2010
Metropolitan Improvements in the 19C Thomas H Shepherd & James Elmes 1828
A short history of St John’s Wood Cecil Beadsmore Smith 1942
Changing London J George Head
(the destruction caused by the building of Gt Central Railway)
The Suburbans T H W Crosland 1905
Comments about this page
Some of the people involved in an unsolved murder in Cheltenham lived in Radlett Place, St John’s Wood. For details, see Richard Whittington-Egan, The Great British Torso Mystery (Liverpool, Bluecoat Press, 2002). I have a copy of this I’d be glad to give to the Society if it would like it.
Thank you so much for telling us about the unsolved murder and Radlett Place – we would love to see the book and if you sent it to 7 Middle Field, St Johns Wood Park NW8 6ND it would receive a warm welcome! – thank you for thinking of us, Bridget Clarke
In Daphne du Maurier’s “Rebecca”, Colonel Julyan, the magistrate at Kerrith in charge of the inquest into the death of Rebecca, has a sister who lives in St John’s Wood, in “one of those turnings off the Avenue Road”.
The book to which Mr Granados refers is The Quest for Corvo: an Experiment in Biography. It was written by A. J. A. Symons and was published in 1934. There are references in it to another Woodite, Maundy Gregory, who lived in what is now Abbey Road Studios. There have been two biographies of Gregory, Honours for Sale by Gerald Macmillan (1954) and Maundy Gregory by Tom Cullen (1974).
The book “In Search of Corvo” features the “cottage” built in the back garden of 8 Abercorn Place once occupied by: the bibliographer of Oscar Wilde and later by Darcy Cresswell - the New Zealand Poet – who made a modest income selling his poems door to door around the neighbourhood (his ghost has been seen a number of times in the garden, identified by the cloak and slouch hat he always wore.) It had been built by the Edwardian “Gaiety Girl” Maria Studholme Helsby, reputedly as a place to entertain her gentlemen, in order that her mother – who lived with her in the main house – should not be compromised by the use of the larger premises.
May I suggest: ‘St. John’s Wood – An Abode of Love and The Arts’ by Stella Margetson, formerly of 15 Hamilton Terrace.
There is a very small book called A Walk in the Wood and it was by the last vicar of All Saints. It had lots of old photos of St. John’s Wood.
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