Lady Violet Powell

Lady Violet Powell (13 March 1912 – 12 January 2002), born Violet Georgiana Pakenham, third daughter of Thomas Pakenham, 5th Earl of Longford and Lady Mary Julia Child Villiers (daughter of Victor Child-Villiers, 7th Earl of Jersey), was a writer and critic. She was educated at St Margaret's School, Bushey.

She married Anthony Powell (21 December 1905 – 28 March 2000) on 1 December 1934 at All Saints Anglican Church, Ennismore Gardens, Knightsbridge; they had two children, Tristram and John.

A member of a highly literary family, Lady Violet's brothers were Edward and Frank, while her sisters included Pansy and Mary Pakenham. She was herself a distinguished memoirist and biographer. Her The Life of a Provincial Lady (1988), on the life of E. M. Delafield, has been called by one critic "one of the best literary biographies of a British writer in the twentieth century". Those who knew the couple well believed that Lady Violet made significant contributions to the richness, depth and polish of her husband's work.

She is generally taken to be the model for the character of Isobel Tolland in her husband's novel sequence A Dance to the Music of Time .

Books

Some of her books are:

• The Album of Anthony Powell's Dance to the Music of Time
• A Compton-Burnett Compendium
• A Jane Austen Compendium: The Six Major Novels
• The Constant Novelist: A Study of Margaret Kennedy, 1896–1967
• Flora Annie Steel: Novelist of India
• The Irish Cousins: The Books and Background of Somerville and Ross
• The Life of a Provincial Lady: A Study of E.M. Delafield and Her Works
• Margaret, Countess of Jersey: A Biography
• A Substantial Ghost: The Literary Adventures of Maude ffoulkes

Autobiography

1. Five Out of Six: An Autobiography (a reference to her birth order amongst her siblings)
2. Within the Family Circle: An Autobiography
3. The Departure Platform: An Autobiography