G. Sheila Donisthorpe
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Children to Bless You! (play, 1936)
G. Sheila Donisthorpe | |
|---|---|
| Born | 17 December 1898 |
| Died | 1 September 1946 |
| Occupation(s) | Novelist, playwright |
| Notable work | Loveliest of Friends! (novel, 1931) Children to Bless You! (play, 1936) |
| Spouse | Frank Wordsworth Donisthorpe |
Gladys Sheila Donisthorpe (17 December 1898 – 1 September 1946), born Gladys Millie Leon, was a London-born novelist and playwright.
Donisthorpe was born as Gladys Millie Leon in London in 1898.
In 1916, Donisthorpe married British inventor and tennis player[1] Frank Wordsworth Donisthorpe, son of Wordsworth Donisthorpe.[2][3] Donisthorpe was eighteen years old, and the two married in Southwark, England.[4] Her name changed to Gladys Sheila Donisthorpe.
Career
Donisthorpe composed advertising copy for Selfridges department stores.[5] Donisthorpe's first novel, You (1928), was called "a childishly immature, pretentious, and trivial book, with no artistic excuse for its existence" in an American newspaper.[6] Her next novel was the pulpy[7] Loveliest of Friends! (1931), a cautionary story about married women seduced into lesbian relationships. "If the book is a trifle wordy, the words are all of a dark, poisonous, decadent beauty, a lush pornography, like the tale," commented a North Carolina reviewer.[8] A Boston reviewer considered it "an unhappy and revolting novel."[9] The novel was popular in the United States and Great Britain, going through several editions.[10]
Of Loveliest of Friends! and its lesbian themes, Neil Pearson wrote: "since everything else Donisthorpe wrote seems to have been drawn from life it’s probably safe to assume that Loveliest of Friends describes a phase in her personal development”, but that with the content of the book in mind and how anti-lesbian it was, “[Donisthorpe] wasn’t gay, and it shows.”[11]
Plays by Donisthorpe included Children to Bless You! (1935-1936),[12][13] First Night (1937),[14] Guests at Lancaster Gate, Mermaid's Gout, Other People's Houses (1941), Gaily We Set Out, Society Blues, and Fruit of the Tree.[15] One of her novels was adapted for film as First Night (1937); another play by Donisthorpe, Children to Bless You!, was broadcast live on British television.
Donisthorpe published a memoir in 1943 titled Show Business: A Book of the Theatre.
