Lehmann, Rosamond Nina

Rosamond Nina Lehmann was born in Buckinghamshire on 3 Feb. 1901. She came up to Girton College, Cambridge in 1919 to read English and French. She married Leslie Runciman in 1923 and published her first novel, the best-seller 'Dusty Answer', in 1927. Shortly after this she and Leslie were divorced, and she married Wogan Philipps, 2nd Baron Milford, in November 1928.

Her reputation was established with 'A Note in Music', 'Invitation to the Waltz' and 'The Weather in the Streets', all published in the 1930s. By this time, Rosamond and her husband were friends of Lytton Strachey and Dora Carrington, and through them with other members of the Bloomsbury group. Virginia Woolf admired her novels. Relations with Wogan Philipps gradually deteriorated in the late 1930s and she began affairs with Goronwy Rees and later with Cecil Day Lewis. She continued to write novels, short stories and plays; her autobiographical statement 'The Swan in the Evening' was published in 1967. She died in March 1990 at Clareville Grove, London.

From the guide to the The Papers of Rosamond Nina Lehmann, 1860-2009, (King's College Archive Centre, Cambridge)