Сибилль Бедфорд: Өмір және шығарма жолы

German born English non fiction writer (1911–2006)

Sybille Bedford, OBE (16 March 1911 – 17 February 2006) was a German born English writer of non fiction and semi autobiographical fiction books. She was a recipient of the Golden PEN Award.

She was born as Sybille Aleid Elsa von Schoenebeck in Charlottenburg, west of Berlin in the Kingdom of Prussia, to Maximilian Josef von Schoenebeck (1853–1925), a German aristocrat, retired lieutenant colonel and art collector, and his German Jewish wife, Elisabeth Bernhardt (1888–1937). Sybille was raised in the Roman Catholic faith of her father at Castle Feldkirch in Baden. She had a half sister by her father's first marriage to Elisabeth Marchesani, Maximiliane Henriette von Schoenebeck (later Baroness von Dincklage, aka Jacko or Catsy). Her parents divorced in 1918, and she remained with her father, under somewhat impoverished circumstances in the midst of his art and wine collection. He died in 1925, when she was 14 years old, and Sybille went to live in Italy with her mother and stepfather, an Italian architectural student. During those years she studied in England, lodging in Hampstead. In the early 1920s, Sybille often travelled between England and Italy. With the rise of fascism in Italy, though, her mother and stepfather settled in Sanary sur Mer, a small coastal fishing village in Provence in the south of France, near Toulon and Marseille. Sybille herself settled there as a teenager, living near Aldous Huxley, with whom she became friends. Bedford interacted with and was influenced by many of the German writers who settled in the area during that time, including Thomas Mann and Bertolt Brecht. Meanwhile, her mother became addicted to morphine, which had been prescribed by a local physician, and became increasingly dysfunctional. At this time it was difficult for her to renew her German passport, and staying in Italy without a valid passport or a source of income carried the risk of being deported to Germany. Aldous Huxley's wife Maria came up with a solution in 1935. Maria is known to have said, on the question of who should marry Sybille, "We need to get one of our bugger friends." Sybille entered a marriage of convenience with an English Army officer, Walter "Terry" Bedford (an ex boyfriend of a former manservant of W. H. Auden's), whom she described as a friend's "bugger butler", and obtained a British passport. who left her husband for Bedford and became a writer and editor herself. In the 1950s Bedford became Martha Gellhorn's confidante. A Legacy, Bedford's second book and first novel, was published in 1956 and successfully televised by the BBC in 1975. It was described by Francis King as "one of the great books of the 20th century". Evelyn Waugh wrote in a letter to Nancy Mitford, "I wondered who this brilliant 'Mrs Bedford' could be. A cosmopolitan military man, plainly, with a knowledge of parliamentary government and popular journalism, a dislike of Prussians, a liking for Jews, a belief that everyone speaks French in the home " Though outwardly a work of fiction, it was somewhat autobiographical – it presents a stylised version of her father's life in Germany, as well as some of the author's early childhood there. It was a success and enabled Bedford to continue writing. In her lifetime, three more novels were published, as well as numerous works of non fiction. In non fiction she was best known as a travel writer and a legal reporter. In 1945 she met Esther Murphy, who would become her lover. The relationship lasted only a few years, but they remained lifelong friends. Bedford spent the 1950s, the 1960s and the 1970s living in France, Italy, Britain and Portugal, and during that period had a twenty year relationship with the American female novelist Eda Lord.