Sybille Bedford
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Sybille von Schoenebeck (16 March 1911 – 17 February 2006) was a British author under her married name of Sybille Bedford. Many of her works are at least partly autobiographical.
She was born in Charlottenburg to Maximilian von Schoenebeck and his wife, Elizabeth Bernard. She was raised in the Roman Catholic faith of her father at Feldkirch in Baden. Her parents divorced in 1918, at the end of World War I, and she remained with her father, who decided to home school her, giving her an eclectic education which focussed on grammar and wine-tasting. He died in 1920, when she was ten years old, and Sybille went to live in Italy with her mother and step-father. She studied in England, lodging in Hampstead.
With Mussolini's rise to power, Sybille returned to her mother and step-father in Sanary-sur-Mer, a small fishing village, where she lived near Aldous Huxley, with whom she became friends. Many German writers had moved to the area after Hitler's rise. Sybille's mother became addicted to morphine prescribed by a chemist, and became increasingly dysfunctional.
In the 1930s the Nazis discovered Sybille's Jewish ancestry (her mother was a German Jew, with some English ancestry), making it difficult for her to renew her German passport. She entered a marriage of convenience in 1935 with a British army officer, Walter "Terry" Bedford, and obtained a British passport. The marriage ended shortly thereafter.
She authored several anti-Fascist articles, and was advised to leave France when Germany invaded in 1940. She went to live in Rome. During this time she had a love affair with an American woman, Evelyn Glendel, who left her husband for Sybille.
She followed the Huxleys to California and spent the rest of World War II in America. After the war, she lived in France, Italy, Britain, and Portugal, and had a twenty-year relationship with novelist Eda Lord.
In 1979 Sybille settled in Chelsea in London. In 1981 she was appointed OBE. She worked for PEN, was a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, and in 1994 became a Companion of Literature.
[edit] Works
- The Sudden View: a Mexican Journey - 1953 - (republished as A Visit to Don Otavio: a Traveller's Tale from Mexico Eland Books), a travelogue
- A Legacy: A Novel - 1956 - her first novel, a work focussed on the brutality and anti-Semitism in the cadet schools of the German officer class that made Hitler's rise to power possible.
- The Best We Can Do: (The Trial of Dr Adams) - 1958 - an account of the trial of John Bodkin Adams
- The Faces of Justice: A traveller's report - 1961 - a description of the legal systems of England, Germany, Switzerland, and France.
- A Favourite of the Gods - 1963 - a novel about an American heiress who marries a Roman Prince
- A Compass Error - 1968 - a novel about the lesbian love affair the granddaughter of the protagonist of A Favourite of the Gods.
- Pleasures and Landscapes: A Traveller's Tales from Europe
- Aldous Huxley: A biography - 1973 - the standard, authorized biography of Huxley
- Jigsaw: An Unsentimental Education - 1989. Republished by Eland Books 2005
- As It Was: Pleasures, Landscapes and Justice - 1990 - a collection of magazine pieces on various trials, including the censorship of Lady Chatterley's Lover, the trial of Jack Ruby, and the Auschwitz trial, and pieces on food and travel writing.
- Quicksands: A Memoir - 2005
