Neville-Sington, Pamela

PERSONAL:

Female. Education: Attended Harvard and Oxford Universities; Warburg Institute, London, England, doctorate.

ADDRESSES:

Agent—c/o Author Mail, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, Orion House, 5 Upper Saint Martin's Ln., London WC2H 9EA, England.

CAREER:

Writer.

WRITINGS:

Paradise Dreamed: How Utopian Thinkers Have Changed the Modern World, Bloomsbury (London, England), 1993.

(Editor and author of introduction and notes), Frances Milton Trollope, Domestic Manners of the Americans, Penguin Books (New York, NY), 1997.

Fanny Trollope: The Life and Adventures of a Clever Woman, Viking (New York, NY), 1998.

Robert Browning: A Life after Death, Weidenfeld & Nicolson (London, England), 2004.

Also editor of Domestic Manners of the Americans, by Fanny Trollope, Penguin Classics.

SIDELIGHTS:

In her book Fanny Trollope: The Life and Adventures of a Clever Woman, Pamela Neville- Sington tells the life story of British author Anthony Trollope's mother. The author discusses Fanny's unhappy marriage to Trollope's father and her eventual trip to America, which was designed to help repair her dire financial straits and resulted in her 1832 book Domestic Manners of the Americans. Overall, Fanny Trollope wrote more than forty books, both fiction and nonfiction, with many of them first appearing in monthly excerpts in periodicals. "Neville- Sington reveals that Anthony ‘borrowed’ many of his best characters and storylines from his mother's fictional world," wrote Veronica Groocock in the New Statesman. Mary Ellen Quinn, writing in Booklist, referred to the biography as "highly readable" and noted that the author culls much from the written works of both mother and son "to provide insight into her subject's life." A Publishers Weekly contributor wrote that the author's "lively and often wryly humorous biography captures all the color of Fanny's adventures and her exuberant determination to make something of her life."

Neville-Sington covers another noted writer's life in Robert Browning: A Life after Death. In her biography, the author forgoes the usual emphasis on Browning's relationship and marriage with the better-known Elizabeth Barrett Browning to focus instead on the time in Browning's life following Elizabeth's death. She discusses how Browning coped with numerous issues in his life—from his disappointing son to dealing with his wife's legacy to his many romantic relationships—while working on his critically acclaimed Ring and the Book. A Publishers Weekly contributor noted the author's "sensitive portrayal of Browning's mourning period and his emotional life during his widowerhood." Stephen Wade, writing in the Contemporary Review, called the biography "absorbing and beautifully written," adding: "One of the many good things about the book is the skill the author has in evoking the writing life of the poet." Spectator contributor Lloyd Evans referred to the biography as "vivid and illuminating."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Booklist, October 15, 1998, Mary Ellen Quinn, review of Fanny Trollope: The Life and Adventures of a Clever Woman, p. 388.

Contemporary Review, April, 1998, James Munson, review of Fanny Trollope, p. 217; December, 2004, Stephen Wade, review of Robert Browning: A Life after Death, p. 374.

Financial Times, June 5, 2004, review of Robert Browning, p. 33.

Kirkus Reviews, January 15, 2006, review of Robert Browning, p. 75.

Library Journal, November 1, 1998, R. Kelley, review of Fanny Trollope, p. 82.

New Statesman, January 2, 1998, Veronica Groocock, review of Fanny Trollope, p. 51.

Publishers Weekly, October 5, 1998, review of Fanny Trollope, p. 66; January 9, 2006, review of Robert Browning, p. 48.

Reference & Research Book News, May, 2006, review of Robert Browning.

Spectator, June 26, 2004, Lloyd Evans, review of Robert Browning, p. 38.

Sunday Times (London, England), November 14, 1993, John Carey, review of Paradise Dreamed: How Utopian Thinkers Have Changed the Modern World.

Times (London, England), November 4, 1993, Peter Ackroyd, review of Paradise Dreamed: How Utopian Thinkers Have Changed the Modern World, p. 38.

Women's Review of Books, February, 1999, Mary Wilson Carpenter, review of Fanny Trollope, p. 1.