Other Fiction Sedgwick, Anne Douglas: The Shadow of Life. v1. 17 Jul 2014

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Anne Douglas Sedgwick (March 28, 1873 - July 19, 1935) was an American-born British writer. The daughter of a businessman, she was born in Englewood, New Jersey but at age nine her family moved to London. Although she made return visits to the United States, she lived in England for the remainder of her life. In 1908, she married the British essayist and journalist, Basil de Sélincourt. During World War I she and her husband were volunteer workers in hospitals and orphanages in France. Her novels explored the contrast in values between Americans and Europeans. Her bestselling novel Tante was made into a 1918 film, The Impossible Woman and The Little French Girl into a 1925 film of the same name. In 1931, she was elected to the United States National Institute of Arts and Letters. Four of her books were on the list of bestselling novels in the United States for 1912, 1924, 1927, and 1929 as determined by the New York Times. Anne Douglas Sedgwick died in Hampstead, England in 1935. The following year her husband published "Anne Douglas Sedgwick: A Portrait in Letters."

Excerpt
To such a little girl death had meant no more than a bewildered loneliness, but the bewilderment was so sharp, the loneliness so aching, that she cried herself into an illness. She had seen her dead mother, the sweet, sightless, silent face, familiar yet amazing, and more than any fear or shrinking had been the suffocating mystery of feeling herself forgotten and left behind. Her uncle Nigel, sorrowful and grave, but so large and kind that his presence seemed to radiate a restoring warmth, came to London for her and a fond nurse went with her to the North, and after a few weeks the anxious affection of her aunts Rachel and Barbara built about her, again, a child’s safe universe of love.

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