Eliot Bliss

Eliot Bliss (12 June 1903 – 10 December 1990)^{[1] [2]} was a Jamaican-born English novelist and poet of Anglo-Irish descent, whose literary friendships encompassed Anna Wickham, Dorothy Richardson, Jean Rhys, Romer Wilson and Vita Sackville-West.^[3]

Life

Born Eileen Norah Lees Bliss at a Jamaican army garrison, she was the daughter of Captain John Plomer Bliss and his wife Eva (née Lees).^[4] Bliss was educated at a number of British convent schools. Her brother John was sent to school in England at the same time. She returned in 1923 to Jamaica for two years, a period that was to provide inspiration for her second and last novel. She then settled permanently in England and completed a diploma course in journalism at University College, London. In 1925 she renamed herself Eliot as a mark of her respect for George Eliot and T. S. Eliot.^[4]

Over subsequent years Bliss held various jobs in publishing and established wide friendships with other women writers, notably the fellow novelists Romer Wilson, who gave her financial support while she was writing her first novel, and Vita Sackville-West.^[3] Her relations with the Australian-born poet Anna Wickham (1883–1947) are said to have been intimate.^[5] She lived as a companion for over half a century with Patricia Allan-Burns, an artist, in Bishop's Stortford, Hertfordshire, where she died in 1990. Allan-Burns disposed of her literary remains, the Bliss Collections, in three stages to the McFarlin Library at the University of Tulsa.^[5]

Bliss left daily diaries in 19 volumes covering the periods January 1959 – December 1960 and January 1963 – August 1980. Prominent authors in her personal library, also held at the McFarlin Library, include Jean Rhys, Radclyffe Hall and Emily Dickinson.^[5]

Writings

Both of Bliss's two published novels can be classed as a Bildungsroman. Saraband (1931, reissued 1986) features Louie, a sensitive girl from a genteel family conscious of her inability to do anything of note, unlike her violinist cousin. Family financial problems force her to train as a typist and become "afraid of turning into a machine," but she eventually recognizes the creativity in herself and begins to write. The book was widely praised for its modernist and feminist ideas.

Luminous Isle is a largely autobiographical tale of a girl's return to Jamaica aged 19 after attending school in England. Her desire to treat the island as her home is thwarted by the narrowness of life there, its "hypocrisy and hidden indecencies" and its racism.^[3] As a recent critic has pointed out, "The underlying homosexuality of the characters is never spelled out; it remains unuttered, and the intricate implications of the relationships... are never fully explained." A third book of hers, The Albatross, said to have been published in 1935, cannot be traced.^[4]

The poems of Eliot Bliss were only found in 2004 in the home she had shared with Allan-Burns. They were edited and introduced by the University of Trieste academic Michele A. Calderaro and published electronically. Calderaro is also working on a biography.^[6]

References