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In 1960, Storm Jameson decided to write her memoirs. The result was Journey from the North, one of the great literary autobiographies of the century. Volume One, first published in 1969, tells of her childhood in Whitby before the First World War, the strong ties with her formidable mother, an early love of the sea, her intellectual achievements at university and falling in love. She vividly recalls her first marriage and the birth of her son; then came her first book, work in London, and the deep happiness of her second marriage to Guy Chapman, the novelist and historian. In the thirties she became increasingly involved in politics, and her accounts of the Depression and the rise of Fascism in Europe demonstrate her exceptional understanding of the years between the wars. But the most extraordinary quality of this autobiography is its fine truthfulness. Her candour - about wanting to be an artist, about failures of courage and of love, her devotion to her son and yet a need for a life of her own - is quite exceptional. Journey from the North is a brilliantly told story of a fascinating life.
About the author
Storm Jameson was born in 1891 to a North Yorkshire family of shipbuilders. Jameson's fiery mother, who bore three girls, encouraged Storm (christened Margaret Storm) to pursue an education; after being taught privately and at Scarborough municipal school she won one of three county scholarships which enabled her to read English Literature at Leeds University. She then went on to complete an MA in European Drama at King's College London.
During her career Jameson wrote forty-five novels, numerous pamphlets, essays, and reviews, in an effort to make money. Her personal life suffered, and her first marriage to schoolmaster Charles Douglas Clarke was an unhappy one. After they divorced in 1925, Jameson went on to marry Guy Chapman, a fellow author, and remained with him despite her apparent rejection of normal domestic life.
Storm Jameson was always politically active, helping to publish a Marxist journal in the British section of the International Union of Revolutionary Writers in 1934 and attending anti-fascist rallies. She died in 1986.
