The Well-Known Novelist Rosamond Lehmann

The latest book by the well-known British novelist Rosamond Lehmann — the fifth book she has written, entitled "Lyric Poetry and the Source of Inspiration" — was published more than a year ago.

News has reached us that Walter Wanger, the well-known American and one of the magnates of the motion-picture industry, has bought this novel for the sum of 50,000 pounds. This sum has raised Rosamond into the class of writers who command high prices for what they produce.

This writer began writing poetry at the age of six, when she composed a small piece of verse; she went on composing piece after piece until she reached fourteen, sometimes composing three or four pieces in a single day. She wrote about flowers, spring, summer, autumn, winter, the moon, the stars, and the fairies. She never composed a verse without showing it to her father, and she was always confident that she would one day become a famous writer — the credit for which goes to her father's attention to everything she wrote and to his encouragement of her. She says: "In my childhood I knew nothing but pleasure and delight in our house, which stands on the river bank with its luxuriant garden. I lived a happy family life among my sisters, my brother, and my cousins, and I would often wander alone in the garden of our house."

Rosamond did not go to school; instead her mother set up a small school in the garden and brought to it a schoolmistress and a Belgian governess. This school began by teaching the Lehmann girls and five of the neighbors' children, then grew little by little until its pupils numbered twenty, with two teachers of English and a teacher of French; a dancing class and a drawing class were added, and the parson taught the pupils Latin and Greek.

When she reached seventeen, Rosamond won the right to free instruction and entered one of the universities. On leaving the university she began writing fiction and set the composition of verse aside; she had resolved to marry, to have children, and to become a novelist.

All these hopes came true for her.

Rosamond wrote the first novel of her life when she was twenty-two, and the first publisher who read it accepted it for publication.

Two years after that she wrote a book about music, and finally, in 1944, she published "Lyric Poetry and the Source of Inspiration."

This writer's life may be summed up as caring for her children, seeing her friends, reading books, and music.

The members of her family are waiting to see her latest novel brought out on the silver screen.