V.Hunt

VIOLET HUNT (1862 - 1942)

The notorious 'new woman' novelist, sometimes dubbed 'Violent Hunt' was born in Durham at 29 Old Elvet. Her parents had earlier lived at Crook Hall (where John Ruskin came to stay). Her father, Alfred Hunt, was a painter of Pre-Raphaelite leanings, with a passion for the wild landscapes of Northumberland. He was also, however, one of the few Victorian painters to celebrate the industrial achievements of the age. Violet's mother, Margaret, wrote many light-weight novels with happy endings, and had begun taking drawing-lessons from William Bell Scott (q.v.) in 1851, when she was twenty. It was through Scott that she learned of Rossetti and the Pre-Raphaelites who were to loom so large in her life - and indeed through him that she met her future husband. The Hunts moved to London in 1865, partly in order to further Hunt's career and partly because of friction with the Durham clergy, whom Margaret was to portray unflatteringly in her first novel Magdalen Wyngard.

Violet later wrote seventeen novels, all concerned with relationships and sexual politics. While her parents were alive, the family spent many holidays in northern England and kept up the connection with Ruskin in the Lake District. Violet's novel The Human Interest is set in the same locations, notably by the River Greta, as is Magdalen Wyngard. Her books are curiously neglected today, but in her time, she was admired by many, including Henry James, D.H. Lawrence, Rebecca West and May Sinclair. She had several well-publicised affairs, including inevitably H.G. Wells and, more surprisingly, Somerset Maugham. From another liaison she contracted syphilis. Violet was the model for Nora Nesbit in Maugham's Of Human Bondage (1915), but she was less pleased when he dedicated his travel book The Land of the Blessed Virgin to her. Between 1908-18, she conducted a stormy relationship with Ford Madox Ford (q.v.) and appears as Sylvia Tietjens in Ford's great war tetralogy Parade's End, among other works.

Myers Literary Guide:	The North-East
VIOLET HUNT (1862 - 1942) The notorious 'new woman' novelist, sometimes dubbed 'Violent Hunt' was born in Durham at 29 Old Elvet. Her parents had earlier lived at Crook Hall (where John Ruskin came to stay). Her father, Alfred Hunt, was a painter of Pre-Raphaelite leanings, with a passion for the wild landscapes of Northumberland. He was also, however, one of the few Victorian painters to celebrate the industrial achievements of the age. Violet's mother, Margaret, wrote many light-weight novels with happy endings, and had begun taking drawing-lessons from William Bell Scott (q.v.) in 1851, when she was twenty. It was through Scott that she learned of Rossetti and the Pre-Raphaelites who were to loom so large in her life - and indeed through him that she met her future husband. The Hunts moved to London in 1865, partly in order to further Hunt's career and partly because of friction with the Durham clergy, whom Margaret was to portray unflatteringly in her first novel Magdalen Wyngard. Violet later wrote seventeen novels, all concerned with relationships and sexual politics. While her parents were alive, the family spent many holidays in northern England and kept up the connection with Ruskin in the Lake District. Violet's novel The Human Interest is set in the same locations, notably by the River Greta, as is Magdalen Wyngard. Her books are curiously neglected today, but in her time, she was admired by many, including Henry James, D.H. Lawrence, Rebecca West and May Sinclair. She had several well-publicised affairs, including inevitably H.G. Wells and, more surprisingly, Somerset Maugham. From another liaison she contracted syphilis. Violet was the model for Nora Nesbit in Maugham's Of Human Bondage (1915), but she was less pleased when he dedicated his travel book The Land of the Blessed Virgin to her. Between 1908-18, she conducted a stormy relationship with Ford Madox Ford (q.v.) and appears as Sylvia Tietjens in Ford's great war tetralogy Parade's End, among other works.
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