Storm Jameson

Storm Jameson

Margaret Storm Jameson (8 January 1891 – 30 September 1986) was an English writer, known for her 45 novels, and criticism.

She was born in Whitby, Yorkshire, and studied at the University of Leeds. She moved to London, where she earned an MA from King's College London in 1914 and then went on to teach before becoming a full-time writer. She married the writer Guy Chapman, but continued to publish as Storm Jameson. She also published three novels pseudonymously in 1937-38, two under the name James Hill and one under the name William Lamb.

She was a prominent president of the British branch of the International PEN association, from 1939, and active in helping refugee writers. Storm Jameson wrote three volumes of autobiography; a biography by Jennifer Birkett, Professor of French Studies at Birmingham University, was published by the Oxford University Press in March 2009.

Her most controversial work is Modern Drama in Europe, a critical analysis of the progress made in drama in the first part of the twentieth century. Though most of her commentaries are highly critical and sometimes malicious, her boldness reaches its peak when she asserts that William Butler Yeats "represents the last state in symbolic imbecility".

The rebuilt Charles Morris Halls of the University of Leeds now have a building named after her, Storm Jameson Court.