Edith Penelope Mary Lutyens (pseudonymEsther Wyndham; 31 July 1908 – 9 April 1999)[3] was a British author who is principally known for her biographical works on the philosopher Jiddu Krishnamurti.
As a child, Lutyens spent time with her maternal grandmother Edith, the former vicereine, who lived at Knebworth, thirty miles from London, with her daughter the suffragette Constance Bulwer-Lytton. Edwin Lutyens had designed a dower house for his mother-in-law called Homewood.
As a result of her mother's interest in theosophy,[1] Lutyens met Krishnamurti when she was a child: she knew him from 1911 until his death in 1986.
In the 1920s, her father was working on his buildings at Delhi. Lutyens visited India with her mother and went to Australia, staying at The Manor, a centre run by Charles Webster Leadbeater in Mosman, New South Wales,[4] while Krishnamurti and his brother Nitya stayed at another house nearby. Lutyens stayed there for some time, which eventually provided her with material for her book Krishnamurti: The Years of Awakening.[5]
Career
Apart from her works on Krishnamurti, Lutyens wrote biographies of John Ruskin, Effie Gray and her own family. In her book Millais and the Ruskins she put forward the controversial argument that Ruskin could not consummate his marriage because he was repelled by his wife's pubic hair.[6]
Lutyens married twice. Her first marriage, in 1930, to Anthony Rupert Herbert Franklin Sewell, a stockbroker, produced one daughter, Amanda Lutyens Sewell, but ended in divorce in 1945. Her second marriage, in 1945, was to Joseph Gluckstein Links, art historian and royal furrier, and ended with his death in 1997.
Lutyens was interviewed, in April 1976, by the historian, Brian Harrison, as part of the Suffrage Interviews project, titled Oral evidence on the suffragette and suffragist movements: the Brian Harrison interviews[8]. She spoke about her mother's disapproval of militancy in the suffrage movement, and her interest in Theosophy and in India, including her influence over her brother(Mary's Uncle) Victor Lytton, as regards Home Rule in India. She also speaks about the life of her Aunt, the suffragette, Constance Bulwer-Lytton.
Works
Perchance to Dream, London: John Murray, 1935.
To be young : some chapters of autobiography, London: R. Hart-Davies, 1959 OCLC 568002749, 1989 edition: ISBN 9780552993364
Effie in Venice: Effie Ruskin's Letters Home 1849–1852, London: John Murray, 1965, Pallas Athene (UK), 2001 edition: ISBN 1-873429-33-9.
Millais and the Ruskins, London: John Murray, 1967, Vanguard Press in USA.
Cleo, London: Michael Joseph, 1973.
Krishnamurti: The Years of Awakening, London: John Murray, 1975, Shambhala Publications reprint edition 1997: ISBN 1-57062-288-4. First installment of a three-volume biography, covers the period from Krishnamurti's birth in 1895 to 1933.
Krishnamurti: The Years of Fulfilment, London: John Murray, 1983, ISBN 0-7195-3979-X, Farrar, Straus, Giroux paperback: ISBN 0-374-18224-8, Avon Books 1991 reprint with US spelling "Fulfillment": ISBN 0-380-71112-5. Second volume of the Krishnamurti biography, covers the years from 1933 to 1980.
Krishnamurti: The Open Door, London: John Murray, 1988, ISBN 0-7195-4534-X. Final volume of biography covers years 1980 to 1986, the end of Krishnamurti's life.
The Lyttons in India: An account of Lord Lytton's Viceroyalty, 1876–1880 London: John Murray, 1979, ISBN 0-7195-3677-4.
The Life and Death of Krishnamurti, London: John Murray, 1990, ISBN 0-7195-4749-0, Nesma Books India 1999: ISBN 81-87075-44-9, ISBN 0-900506-22-9, also published as Krishnamurti: His Life and Death, St Martins Press 1991: ISBN 0-312-05455-6, an abridgement of her trilogy on Krishnamurti's life.
The Boy Krishna, 1995, Krishnamurti Foundation Trust paperback: ISBN 0-900506-13-X. Subtitled, "The First Fourteen Years in the Life of J. Krishnamurti".
Krishnamurti and the Rajagopals, 1996, Ojai, CA: Krishnamurti Foundation of America, ISBN 1-888004-08-8.
J. Krishnamurti: A Life, 2005, Penguin Books India, ISBN 0-14-400006-7. This book is a compilation of The Years of Awakening, The Years of Fulfilment, and The Open Door.
References
^ a bLutyens, (Edith Penelope). Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Subscription or membership of a UK public library required.
^ a b cAnderson, S. "Obituary: Mary Lutyens".
^"(Edith Penelope) Mary Lutyens (1909–1999)". National Portrait Gallery. Retrieved 13 July 2016.