Teo Savory (December 27, 1907 – November 14, 1989) was an American novelist, poet, translator, and publisher.

Early life

Sources indicate that Teo Savory was born Elizabeth Bullis Dunbar in 1907, the daughter of Lambert Dunbar (1879–1965) and Elsie Lyons (1883–1949). Lambert Dunbar was a

flour Flour is a powder made by grinding raw grains, roots, beans, nuts, or seeds. Flours are used to make many different foods. Cereal flour, particularly wheat flour, is the main ingredient of bread, which is a staple food for many c ...

merchant from

Portland, Oregon Portland (, ) is a port city in the Pacific Northwest and the largest city in the U.S. state of Oregon. Situated at the confluence of the Willamette and Columbia rivers, Portland is the county seat of Multnomah County, the most populou ...

, who emigrated to

Hong Kong Hong Kong ( (US) or (UK); , ), officially the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China (abbr. Hong Kong SAR or HKSAR), is a city and special administrative region of China on the eastern Pearl River Delta i ...

early in the 20th century to manage a family business there. Savory's place of birth is disputed: according to her own later account, she was born in Hong Kong, whereas other sources give her birthplace as Portland, Oregon, and indicate that the Dunbar family did not move from the U.S. to Hong Kong until 1915. Her first marriage (to Michael Gurney-Hoare in Hong Kong in 1929) ended in divorce. According to later newspaper interviews, she attended the

Royal College of Music The Royal College of Music is a music school, conservatoire established by royal charter in 1882, located in South Kensington, London, UK. It offers training from the Undergraduate education, undergraduate to the Doctorate, doctoral level in a ...

in London and was involved in musical comedy theater while living in England. After returning to the U.S., she married expatriate British playwright

Gerald Savory Gerald Douglas Savory (17 November 1909 – 9 February 1996) was an English writer and television producer specialising in comedies. Biography The son of Kenneth Douglas Savory and actress Grace Lane (1877–1956), he was educated at Bradfield ...

in 1938. Gerald Savory's first wife is listed as "Teo Dunbar." In the

1940 U.S. Census The United States census of 1940, conducted by the Census Bureau, determined the resident population of the United States to be 132,164,569, an increase of 7.3 percent over the 1930 population of 122,775,046 people. The census date of record wa ...

, she was listed as TeoSavory. Although her marriage to Savory also ended in divorce, she retained this professional name for her literary career. In the 1940s and 1950s she was an executive secretary and publicist for New York's

American National Theatre and Academy The American National Theatre and Academy (ANTA) is a non-profit theatre producer and training organization that was established in 1935 to be the official United States national theatre that would be an alternative to the for-profit Broadway houses ...

and the Woodstock Playhouse, and established an agency that handled television scripts.

Writing and publishing career

Savory published her first stories, "Eat Dusty Bread" and "Before This, In Dreams" in 1947–1948. In 1958 she married American poet Alan Brilliant (born 1936), with whom she founded Unicorn Press, a small publishing house, in 1966. Her debut novel, ''The Landscape of Dreams'' (1960), a semi-autobiographical story of a girl raised in China and the United States, was described in '' Kirkus Reviews'' as "a sensitive first novel." Her 1961 book ''The Single Secret'', a narrative of a female mental patient and her physician, was praised in ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

'' as "a remarkable novel" and the work of "an exceptionally skilled and perceptive novelist." ''Stonecrop'', her 1977 novel describing life in a small town in

Massachusetts Massachusetts (Massachusett language, Massachusett: ''Muhsachuweesut assachusett writing systems, məhswatʃəwiːsət'' English: , ), officially the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, is the most populous U.S. state, state in the New England ...

, won a Massachusetts Council on the Arts & Humanities Award. Savory also published many English translations of French and German writers and poets, including

Jacques Prévert Jacques Prévert (; 4 February 1900 – 11 April 1977) was a French poet and screenwriter. His poems became and remain popular in the French-speaking world, particularly in schools. His best-regarded films formed part of the poetic realist movemen ...

, Guillevic, and

Günter Eich Günter Eich (; 1 February 1907 – 20 December 1972) was a German lyricist, dramatist, and author. He was born in Lebus, on the Oder River, and educated in Leipzig, Berlin, and Paris. Life Eich made his first appearance in print with some poems ...

. She died of lung cancer in Greensboro, North Carolina, in 1989.

Partial bibliography

Novels

*''The Landscape of Dreams'' (1960) *''The Single Secret'' (1961) *''A Penny for his Pocket'' (1963) (UK title: ''A Penny for the Guy'') *''To a High Place'' (1972) *''Stonecrop: The Country I Remember'' (1977) *''To Raise a Rainbow'' (1980)

Short fiction

* ''A Clutch of Fables'' (1977) * ''A Childhood'' (1978) * ''West to East: Tales of the Twenties & Thirties'' (1989)

Poetry

*''Traveler's Palm'' (1967) *''Snow Vole'' (1968) *''Transitions'' (1973) *''Dragons of Mist and Torrent'' (1974)

References

External links

Works by Teo Savory
at

Internet Archive The Internet Archive is an American digital library with the stated mission of "universal access to all knowledge". It provides free public access to collections of digitized materials, including websites, software applications/games, music ...

Unicorn Press
Savory's publishing house {{DEFAULTSORT:Savory, Teo 1907 births 1989 deaths 20th-century American novelists 20th-century American women writers American women poets American women novelists