Elizabeth Jenkins (1905-2010)

Elizabeth Jenkins spent a decade of her long life as an English teacher in Hampstead after being educated at Cambridge. She had enjoyed a writing career of over 70 years, penning novels, biographies and a memoir written in her hundredth year.

She won the Femina Vie Heureuse Prize for her novel “Harriet”, great acclaim for “The Tortoise And The Hare”, and was awarded an OBE in 1981.

Elizabeth was part of the cultural set that included Virginia Woolf and Elizabeth Bowen. Her novels had relationships and their psychology at their heart.

She was also instrumental in saving and restoring Jane Austen’s house in Chawton, and founding the Jane Austen Society. Her books fell out of favour as women’s roles changed, but rereading them demonstrates that the relationships at their core have not altered at all.