Gladys Bronwyn Stern

Gladys Bronwyn Stern or GB Stern (17 June 1890 – 20 September 1973), born Gladys Bertha Stern in London, England, wrote many novels, short stories, plays, memoirs, biographies and literary criticism.

The National Portrait Gallery holds four portraits of her.[1]

Career

GB Stern was born on 17 June 1890 in North Kensington, London, the second, by some years, of two sisters.

She wrote her first novel at the age of 20, and then continued to write a novel every year. Her "Rakonitz" novels, e.g. The Rakonitz Chronicles (1932), were based on her cosmopolitan, non-practising Jewish family. Her plays include The Man Who Pays The Piper (1931), which was revived by the Orange Tree Theatre in Richmond, London in 2013.

With Sheila Kaye-Smith she wrote the dialogues Talking of Jane Austen and More Talk of Jane Austen. She also wrote a biography of Robert Louis Stevenson.

Her final novel, Promise Not to Tell, was published in 1964.

In 1966 her 1938 novel The Ugly Dachshund was made into a film, also titled The Ugly Dachshund.

She married New Zealander Geoffrey Lisle Holdsworth in 1919, and sometimes collaborated with him. After World War II she became a Catholic.

She died in Wallingford, Oxfordshire, England on 28 September 1973.

Daunt Books reissued The Matriarch on 27 June 2013.

Works

Plays

• The Man Who Pays The Piper. A play in a prologue and three acts. (1931)
• The Matriarch. A play in a prologue and three acts. [1931]
• Gala Night at ‘The Willows.' A comedy in one act. [with Rupert Croft Cooke] (1950)
• Raffle for a Bedspread. A one-act play for women only. (1953)

Novels

• Pantomime (1914)
• See-Saw (1914)
• Two and Threes (1916)
• Grand Chain (1917)
• A Marrying Man (1918)
• Children of No Man's Land (1919)
• Larry Munro (1920)
• The Room (1922)
• The Back Seat (1923)
• Tents of Israel [US: The Matriarch] (1924)
• Thunderstorm (1925)
• A Deputy Was King (1926)
• The Dark Gentleman (1927)
• Debonair: The Story of Persephone (1928)
• Petruchia [US: Modesta] (1929)
• Mosaic (1930)
• The Shortest Night (1931)
• Little Red Horses (1932)
• Long-Lost Fathers (1932)
• The Rakonitz Chronicles (1932)
• The Augs, An Exaggeration [US: 'Summer's Play'] (1933)
• Shining and Free (1935)
• Oleander River (1937)
• The Ugly Dachshund (1938)
• The Woman in the Hall (1939)
• A Lion in the Garden (1940)
• Dogs in an Omnibus (1942)
• The Young Matriarch (1942)
• The Reasonable Shores (1946)
• No Son of Mine (1948)
• A Duck to Water (1949)
• Ten Days of Christmas (1950)
• The Donkey Shoe (1952)
• Johnny Forsaken (1954)
• For All We Know (1955)
• Seventy Times Seven(1957)
• Unless I Marry (1959)
• Credit Title (1961)
• Dolphin Cottage (1962)
• Promise Not to Tell (1964)

Short stories

• Smoke Rings (1923)
• Jack a'Manory (1927)
• Gemini (1929)
• The 1865 (1929)
• Empty Tables (1929)
• Sanctuary (1929)
• A Man and His Mother (1929)
• Lady Falconbridge (1929)
• English Earth (1929)
• Quiet Corner (1929)
• The Road (1929)
• Roulette (1929)
• Echo from Ithaca (1929)
• Toes Unmasked (1929)
• The Slower Judas (1929)
• The Sleeping Beauty (1934)
• Pelican Walking (1934)
• The Hazard of the Spanish Horses (1937)
• Long Story Short (1939)

Biography and literary criticism

• The Happy Meddler [With Geoffrey Holdsworth] (1926)
• The Slower Judas (1929)
• Talking of Jane Austen [With Sheila Kaye-Smith] (1943)
• More Talk of Jane Austen [With Sheila Kaye-Smith] (1949)
• R. L. S. An omnibus [Edited and introduced by G.B. Stern] (1950)
• Selected Poems of Robert Louis Stevenson [Edited and introduced by G.B. Stern] (1950)
• Tales and Essays of Robert Louis Stevenson [Edited and with an introduction by G. B. Stern] (1950)
• Robert Louis Stevenson (1952)
• He Wrote Treasure Island. The Story of Robert Louis Stevenson (1954)
• The Patience of a Saint or, Example is Better Than Precept (1958)
• Bernadette [Illustrated by Drake Brookshaw] (1960)

Autobiography, memoirs

• Bouquet (1927)
• Monogram (1936)
• Another Part of the Forest (1941)
• Trumpet Voluntary (1944)
• Benefits Forgot (1949)
• A Name to Conjure With (1953)
• All in Good Time (1954)
• The Way It Worked Out: A Sequel to All in Good Time (1956)
• And Did He Stop and Speak to You? (1957)
• One Is Only Human (1960)

Sources

• G. B. Stern at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database

External links

• Works by Gladys Bronwyn Stern at Project Gutenberg
• Works by Gladys Bronwyn Stern at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks)
• Bibliography of GB Stern’s works
• G.B. Stern - A Brief Bibliography Based on the British Library Catalogue