Jennings, Elizabeth, 1926-2001

Elizabeth Joan Jennings was born on July 18, 1926, in Boston, Lincolnshire, England, the daughter of Henry Cecil Jennings, a physician. She attended Oxford high school, afterwards reading English at St. Anne's College, Oxford where she earned an M.A. with honors in 1949. Jennings discovered poetry at the age of thirteen, with G.K. Chesterton's, "Battle of Lepanto," followed by S.T. Coleridge's "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner," as well as the odes of John Keats. From the beginning, her interest gravitated to lyric poetry. It was at Oxford that she found her artistic niche. Here, she "found the most congenial kind of atmosphere in which a poet can write - friends who were themselves poets and who also seemed to be interested in my work as they were in their own." These friendships were the beginning of what J.D. Scott would term "The Movement." From 1950 to 1958, Jennings worked at the Oxford City Library, followed by employment as a reader at Chatto and Windus publishers from 1958 to 1960. She then worked as a free-lance writer and full-time poet. Jennings contributed many articles and reviews, as well as poetry, to periodicals, including Encounter, New statesman, The New Yorker, and The spectator. In 1974, Jennings was Guildersleeve Lecturer at Barnard College, Columbia University, New York. She was a member of the Society of Authors and received the following awards and honors: Arts Council Award, 1953, for Poems; Somerset Maugham Award, 1956, for A way of looking; Arts Council bursary, 1965 and 1968; Richard Hillary Memorial Prize, 1966, for The mind has mountains; Arts Council grant, 1972; and the W.H. Smith Award, 1987, for Collected poems. Elizabeth Jennings died at Oxford on Oct. 26, 2001.

From the description of Elizabeth Jennings papers. Part 2, 1972-1988 (bulk 1976-1987). (Georgetown University). WorldCat record id: 82367571

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