Violet Powell

Lady Violet was the third daughter of Thomas Pakenham, 5th Earl of Longford, and the former Lady Mary Child-Villiers, daughter of Victor Child-Villiers, 7th Earl of Jersey. She was educated at St Margaret's School, Bushey.[1]

Lady Violet was a member of a literary family; her brothers were Edward Pakenham and Frank Pakenham, while her sisters included the novelist and biographer Lady Pansy Lamb and the historian Lady Mary Clive. 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".[2] Those who knew the couple well believed that Lady Violet made significant contributions to the richness, depth and polish of her husband's work.[2] She also wrote a biography of the English novelist Flora Annie Steel.[3]

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.[1]

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

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.[1]