Anna Kavan

English novelist and short-story writer

• Born: April 10, 1901
• Birthplace: Cannes, France
• Died: December 5, 1968
• Place of death: London, England

Biography

Even after publication of a well-researched biography in 1992, there remain many mysteries about the turbulent, troubled life of Anna Kavan (KAH-vahn), increasingly recognized as a major twentieth century writer. She was born Helen Woods to a well-to-do English family in 1901, and she spent most of her childhood and adolescence unhappily living in various boarding schools. Some scholars believe that she inherited a lifelong tendency to depression from her father, who apparently committed suicide when Helen was fourteen, a devastating blow to her developing personality. Despite her misfortunes, she did well at school and had the opportunity to attend Oxford University, but she declined because of her mother’s opposition. {$S[A]Ferguson, Helen;Kavan, Anna}

At the age of eighteen she married Donald Ferguson, though she did not love him, and went with him to Burma, where he worked as an engineer. Two years later, after giving birth to a son, Bryan, she returned to England, effectively escaping from a miserable relationship that later ended in divorce. Regularly depressed, she began to use heroin, to which she was addicted for the rest of her life. In 1926, she fell madly in love with a wealthy painter named Stuart Edmonds, eventually becoming his common-law wife, and had a second child who died as an infant. She also began to publish novels using the name Helen Ferguson. The most noteworthy of these, Let Me Alone, is a thinly fictionalized account of her life in Burma.

Despite her early achievements as a writer, the 1930’s proved a difficult period in her life. Her second marriage disintegrated, and her last Helen Ferguson novel, Rich Get Rich, was a failure. She attempted suicide three times, tried unsuccessfully to break her heroin addiction, and was twice institutionalized because of mental breakdowns. During this time, however, she became acquainted with the works of Franz Kafka, which would have a fruitful impact on her later fiction. She then decided to transform herself into a new person, changing her hair color from auburn to blonde and renaming herself Anna Kavan, the name of the heroine of Let Me Alone. (Several sources assert that she changed her name legally, but no records of such an act have been found.)

In the early 1940’s, she traveled to California with a new friend, Ian Ferguson, and later stayed with him in New Zealand, adventures fictionally recounted in the novella My Soul in China; she also began publishing books as Kavan. The first of these, Asylum Piece, and Other Stories, offered a series of brilliant sketches, some linked by the character of a tormented young woman and the setting of a mental institution. It was very well received, as was a second anthology along similar lines, I Am Lazarus. After returning to England she worked and wrote for the avant-garde magazine Horizon. Even during this period of new success, however, misfortune struck: Her son was killed in 1942 while serving with the Royal Air Force.

After World War II her career again seemed in decline, though she published another interesting novel, The House of Sleep, in 1947. By 1956 she was reduced to having to partially finance the publication of A Scarcity of Love herself. She had also ceased traveling and became a recluse of sorts. In 1957 she did meet a supportive publisher, Peter Owen, who would publish almost all of her later works. She began to rebuild her reputation with two fine works, Eagles’ Nest and A Bright Green Field, and attracted further attention with an extraordinary short novel, Who Are You?, which like Let Me Alone fictionalized her experiences in Burma, although in more dark and surrealistic tones. She also wrote a number of evocative stories, published posthumously in Julia and the Bazooka.

Her true triumph came, however, when she took a draft of a novel about a man obsessively pursuing a mysterious woman (the original version was eventually published as Mercury in 1994) and recast it in the new framework of a future world careening toward war and chaos as a global cooling brings massive glaciers threatening to cover and freeze the entire planet. The resulting novel, Ice, won universal acclaim; writer and critic Brian W. Aldiss called it the best science-fiction novel of 1967, and it was accepted for mass-market publication in America. Unfortunately, right at this time, Anna Kavan suddenly died—of natural causes (heart failure induced by lifelong addition to heroin), not suicide as is often reported.

After her death three posthumous collections appeared, several of her earlier books were republished, and Kavan attracted considerable critical attention. Because of her relentlessly unlucky life, it is perhaps grimly appropriate that her greatest success came only when she was no longer able to appreciate it.

Bibliography

Aldiss, Brian. Introduction to Ice. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1970. Aldiss, who met and corresponded with Kavan, discusses Ice as a work of science fiction and Kavan’s reaction to being regarded as a science-fiction writer: “She was surprised. At first, she rejected the idea. Slowly, she came to like it. … I fancy she always liked anything that was a novelty.” He also offers biographical details and interesting insights into her character.

Byrne, Janet. “Moving Toward Entropy: Anna Kavan’s Science Fiction Mentality.” Extrapolation 23 (Spring, 1982): 5-11. One of the few critical articles available on Kavan, it centers on Ice rather than her short fiction, but it nevertheless provides valuable insights into Kavan’s fictional style and concerns. Byrne discusses the novel in the context of Kavan’s earlier work, in which she “consistently saw the world as peopled by characters who treated each other cruelly or foolishly, or were so lost in their own private hells that they had no relation to each other.”

Callard, D. A. The Case of Anna Kavan: A Biography. London: Peter Owen, 1992. An excellent study of the life of Kavan.

Crosland, Margaret. Beyond the Lighthouse: English Women Novelists in the Twentieth Century. London: Constable, 1981. Provides some biographic details on Kavan, followed by a commentary of her works. An appreciative study in which Crosland tries to rally support for Kavan’s experimental fiction and its importance in contemporary British writing.

Davies, Rhys. Introduction to Julia and the Bazooka and Other Stories. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1975. Davies, a good friend of Kavan, reflects on the close relationship between the circumstances of her life (particularly her drug addiction) and her fiction, in particular the story “Julia and the Bazooka.” His valuable psychological insights clarify readings of her fiction.

Dorr, Priscilla. “Anna Kavan.” In An Encyclopedia of British Woman Writers, edited by Paul Schlueter and June Schlueter. New York: Garland, 1988. Places Kavan firmly among literary modernists, citing her experimental novels as “cryptic and symbolic.” Dorr considers Kavan’s most successful novel to be Ice, the last of a trilogy that includes Eagles’ Nest and Who Are You?

Garrity, Jane. “Nocturnal Transgressions in The House of Sleep.” Modern Fiction Studies 40 (Summer, 1994): 253-277. Claims that the work illustrates the critical need to reevaluate Kavan’s experimentalism within a context that foregrounds the conjunction of feminist literary discourse and modernist practice.

Lessing, Doris. “Ice-Maiden Stung by a Spider: ‘Change the Name.’” The Independent, June 5, 1993, p. 28. Lessing provides a short biographical sketch of Kavan and briefly discusses three of her novels: Ice, Change the Name, and My Soul in China. Comments on the relationship between fiction and autobiography.

Nin, Anaïs. The Novel of the Future. New York: Macmillan, 1968. Claims that Kavan has entered the world of the divided self in Asylum Piece and Other Stories, which Nin considers equal to the work of Franz Kafka. Nin refers to Kavan as one of the new American novelists who have been neglected. Contains some valuable insights into Nin’s sparkling style.

Owen, Peter. “Publishing Anna Kavan.” Anais 3 (1985): 75-76. Owen, Kavan’s publisher, offers interesting personal insights (“Anna Kavan was a lonely person, aloof with strangers, who relaxed only with a few intimate friends. … She was an excellent hostess and a good cook”) and a valuable insider’s look at Kavan’s publishing history.

Stuhlmann, Gunther. “Anna Kavan Revisited: The Web of Unreality.” Anais 3 (1985): 55-62. Stuhlmann’s valuable, well-written overview of Kavan’s life and career includes many biographical facts unavailable elsewhere and some discussion of her literary influences and fiction. The article also discusses Anaïs Nin’s interest in Kavan and her work and includes a photograph of Kavan in her garden.

Vannatta, Dennis P., ed. The English Short Story, 1945-1980: A Critical History. Boston: Twayne, 1985. The entry on Kavan examines her collection of short stories, I Am Lazarus. Vannatta considers Kavan’s stories of mental illness and so-called “treatments” valuable but hampered by a lack of range and depth.

Wakeman, John, ed. “Anna Kavan.” In World Authors: 1920-1925. New York: H. W. Wilson, 1980. The entry in this volume provides good background material on Kavan’s life and career, placing her fiction in the context of her life, particularly noting the critical reaction to her work as it appeared. The article contains a photograph of Kavan and a bibliography of her principal works, as well as a listing of critical articles and reviews.