Gillian Freeman
{{Short description|English writer (1929–2019)}}
{{Use British English|date=February 2019}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=February 2019}}
{{Infobox writer
| name = Gillian Freeman
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| birth_date = {{Birth date|df=y|1929|12|5}}
| birth_place = London, England
| death_date = {{Death date and age|df=y|2019|02|23|1929|12|5}}
| death_place = London, England
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| occupation = Writer
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| education =
| alma_mater = University of Reading
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| notableworks = The Leather Boys
| spouse = Edward Thorpe
| partner =
| children = Harriet Thorpe (daughter)
Matilda Thorpe (daughter)
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Gillian Freeman (5 December 1929International Who's Who of Authors and Writers 2004, Routledge, p. 187. – 23 February 2019) was an English writer. Her first book, The Liberty Man, appeared while she was working as a secretary to the novelist Louis Golding. Her fictional diary, Nazi Lady: The Diaries of Elisabeth von Stahlenberg, 1938–48, was assumed by many to be real.
Early life
Born in Maida Vale, London{{cite ODNB |doi=10.1093/odnb/9780198614128.013.90000380869 |title=Freeman, Gillian (1929–2019) |year=2023 |last1=Grove |first1=Valerie |isbn=9780198614128}} to Jewish parents, Dr Jack Freeman, a dentist who had been a physician, and his wife Freda (née Davids),'Marriages', The Times, 13 September 1955. she attended Francis Holland School in London and Lynton House school in Maidenhead during the Second World War.{{Cite news |url=https://www.thetimes.com/article/gillian-freeman-obituary-5gqtmwbk3|title=Gillian Freeman obituary |date=2019-03-16 |work=The Times|access-date=2019-08-02 |language=en |issn=0140-0460}} She graduated in English and philosophy from the University of Reading in 1951. She then taught at a school in the East End and worked as a copywriter and a newspaper reporter.
Career
The Liberty Man (1955) was Freeman's first book, written while working as a literary secretary to the novelist Louis Golding; it was about a love affair between a schoolteacher and a sailor doomed by the class system.Harrison Smith, [https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/obituaries/gillian-freeman-whose-novel-leather-boys-was-a-gay-landmark-dies-at-89/2019/03/11/9ee08e52-4407-11e9-aaf8-4512a6fe3439_story.html "Gillian Freeman, whose novel Leather Boys was a gay landmark, dies at 89"], The Washington Post, 11 March 2019. Freeman's time with Golding was said to have inspired some of her later works.
One of her best known books was the novel The Leather Boys (1961), published under the pseudonym Eliot George, after the novelist George Eliot, a story of a gay relationship between two young working-class men, one married and the other a biker, which was later turned into a film for which she wrote the screenplay, this time under her own name. The novel was commissioned by the publisher Anthony Blond, her literary agent, who wanted a story about a "Romeo and Romeo in the South London suburbs".[https://www.telegraph.co.uk/obituaries/2019/03/04/gillian-freeman-author-whose-flair-detail-shone-historical-novels/ "Gillian Freeman, author whose flair for detail shone through in historical novels and in a 'Romeo and Romeo' love story – obituary"], The Telegraph, 4 March 2019.Martin Foreman, [http://www.martinforeman.com/pages/mfrvleat.html Review of The Leather Boys (Gillian Freeman)] (1986), [https://web.archive.org/web/19990202232437/http://www.martinforeman.com/pages/mfrvleat.html archived] at the Wayback Machine on 2 February 1999. Her non-fiction book The Undergrowth of Literature (1967), was a pioneering study of pornography.Victor E. Neuburg, The Popular Press Companion to Popular Literature, Popular Press, 1983, {{ISBN|0-87972-233-9}}, p. 97.
The Alabaster Egg (1970) is a tragic romance about a Jewish woman set in Nazi Germany. In 1978, on another commission from Blond, she wrote a fictional diary, Nazi Lady: The Diaries of Elisabeth von Stahlenberg, 1938–48. Freeman's authorship was not at first revealed and many readers assumed it was genuine;Anthony Blond, 'Glory Boys', The Sunday Times, 13 June 2004. it was included in a 2004 anthology of war diaries.Joel Rickett, [https://www.theguardian.com/books/2004/dec/11/featuresreviews.guardianreview29 "The Bookseller "], The Guardian, 11 December 2004.
In addition to novels, Freeman wrote screenplays including That Cold Day in the Park, a 1969 film directed by Robert Altman, the scenarios for two ballets by Kenneth MacMillan, Isadora and Mayerling, and with her husband, Ballet Genius (1988), portraits of 20 outstanding ballet dancers. Her final book{{citation needed|date=February 2019}} was But Nobody Lives in Bloomsbury (2006), a fictional study of the Bloomsbury Group.Bethany Layne, "'They Leave out the Person to Whom Things Happened': Re-Reading the Biographical Subject in Sigrid Nunez's Mitz: The Marmoset of Bloomsbury (1998)", in: Bloomsbury Influences: Papers from the Bloomsbury Adaptations Conference, Bath Spa University, 5–6 May 2011, ed. E.H. Wright, Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars, 2014, {{ISBN|9781443854344}}, pp. 30–45, [https://books.google.com/books?id=Js8xBwAAQBAJ&pg=PA41 p. 41].
Private life
Freeman married Edward Thorpe, a novelist and the ballet critic of the Evening Standard, in 1955. The couple had two daughters, the actresses Harriet Thorpe and Matilda Thorpe.
She died in London at the Whittington Hospital on 23 February 2019 from complications of dementia.Neil Genzlinger, [https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/08/obituaries/gillian-freeman-dead.html "Gillian Freeman, Groundbreaking Novelist on a Gay Theme, Dies at 89"], The New York Times, 8 March 2019.
Works
- The Liberty Man, 1955
- Fall of Innocence, 1956
- Jack Would be a Gentleman, 1959
- The Story of Albert Einstein, 1960
- The Leather Boys, 1961
- The Campaign, 1963
- The Leather Boys (screenplay), 1964
- Only Lovers Left Alive (screenplay), 1965
- The Leader, 1965
- The Undergrowth of Literature, 1967
- That Cold Day in the Park (screenplay), 1969
- An Evasion of Women (short play, alongside pieces by Shena Mackay, Margaret Drabble, and Maureen Duffy), 1969Irving Wardle, 'Experiment and Expansion', The Times, 1 March 1969.
- The Alabaster Egg, 1970
- I Want What I Want (screenplay), 1972
- The Marriage Machine, 1975
- The Schoolgirl Ethic: The Life and Work of Angela Brazil, 1976
- Mayerling (ballet scenario), 1978Gillian Freeman, 'The making of Mayerling', The Times, 8 February 1978.
- Intimate Letters (ballet scenario), 1978John Percival, 'Sadler's Wells: Intimate Letters', The Times, 11 October 1978.
- Nazi Lady: The Diaries of Elisabeth von Stahlenberg, 1938–48, 1979
- An Easter Egg Hunt, 1981
- Isadora (ballet scenario), 1981John Percival, 'Isadora, Covent Garden', The Times, 1 May 1981.
- Lovechild, 1984
- Life Before Man, 1986
- Ballet Genius: Twenty Great Dancers of the Twentieth Century (with Edward Thorpe), 1988
- Termination Rock, 1989
- His Mistress's Voice, 2000
- But Nobody Lives in Bloomsbury, 2006
References
{{reflist}}
External links
- [http://www.archiveshub.ac.uk/cgi-bin/deadsearch.cgi?serverid=VSPOKES-ead-reading&bool=AND&numreq=1&fieldcont1=Papers%20of%20Gillian%20Freeman&form=full&fieldidx1=title_NOTRUNC&noframes=on&format=full Listing of Gillian Freeman archives at Reading University Library]
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Category:Alumni of the University of Reading
Category:Pseudonymous women writers
Category:British historical fiction writers
Category:20th-century English women writers
Category:21st-century English women writers
Category:English women novelists
Category:20th-century English novelists
Category:21st-century English novelists
Category:Jewish English writers
Category:English non-fiction writers
Category:Deaths from dementia in England
Category:20th-century pseudonymous writers
Category:21st-century pseudonymous writers
Category:People educated at Francis Holland School