Patricia Margaret Kitchen (23 May 1934 – 23 November 2005) was an English novelist, biographer and art critic.
[Ian Collins]
Paddy Kitchen: Novelist at the heart of a bohemian world of arts and letters
'' The Guardian'', 12 December 2005. Accessed 8 May 2019.
Born in
Battersea
Battersea is a large district in south London, part of the London Borough of Wandsworth, England. It is centred southwest of Charing Cross and extends along the south bank of the River Thames. It includes the Battersea Park.
History
Batter ...
to middle-class parents, she grew up in
Great Missenden, Buckinghamshire. After rejecting an offer from
Cambridge University she moved to London in 1954, working in a Mayfair advertising agency while moonlighting as a hat-check girl in the night club
Le Club Contemporain. While working at the
Royal College of Art she met the painter
Frank Bowling when he was still a student there. They married in 1960 and had one son. Kitchen was one of the women interviewed by
Nell Dunn in ''Talking to Women'' (1965).
[Kate Webb]
Something to say for herself: hearing and recording female voices
'' Times Literary Supplement'', 17 July 2018.
After divorcing Bowling in the late 1960s, Kitchen went on to live with, and later marry, the writer
Dulan Barber. Continuing to write novels, she also began writing non-fiction with biographies of
Patrick Geddes and
Gerard Manley Hopkins
Gerard Manley Hopkins (28 July 1844 – 8 June 1889) was an English poet and Jesuit priest, whose posthumous fame placed him among leading Victorian poets. His prosody – notably his concept of sprung rhythm – established him as an innovato ...
. In later life she bought a house in
Barnwell, Northamptonshire, which became the subject of her book of the same name. She died on 23 November 2005.
[Nell Dunn, ''Talking To Women'', Silver Press, 2018, ]
The novelist
Bessie Head
Bessie Amelia Emery Head (6 July 1937 – 17 April 1986) was a South African writer who, though born in South Africa, is usually considered Botswana's most influential writer. She wrote novels, short fiction and autobiographical works that ar ...
was a close friend. The pair corresponded from 1969 until Head's death in 1986
[M. J. Daymond, ed., ''Everyday Matters: Selected Letters of Dora Taylor, Bessie Head and Lilian Ngoyi'', 2015. .] on a range of subjects, including Head's novel ''A Question of Power''.
[M. J. Daymond]
"I want to feel that I saw and thought all those things for a purpose": Bessie Head's letters to Paddy Kitchen about writing A Question of Power
''Current Writing: Text and Reception in Southern Africa'', Vol. 26, Issue 2 (2014).
Works
Novels
* ''Lying-In'', 1965
* ''A Fleshly School''
* ''Linsey-Woolsey: A novel'', 1971
* ''Paradise''
* (with Dulan Barber) ''Marriage Ring: A novel'', 1977
* ''A Pillar of Cloud'', 1979
* ''The Golden Veil'', 1981
* ''Blue Shoe'', 1988
Non-fiction
* ''A Most Unsettling Person: An Introduction to the Ideas and Life of Patrick Geddes'', 1975
* ''Gerard Manley Hopkins: A Life'', 1978
* ''Poets' London'', 1980
* ''Barnwell'', 1985
* ''The Way to Write Novels'', 1995
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Kitchen, Paddy
1934 births
2005 deaths
English novelists
English biographers
English art critics