Gillian Freeman
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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Gillian Freeman (5 December 1929 - 23 February 2019) was a British writer best known for her book The Undergrowth of Literature (1967), a pioneering study of pornography. She also wrote the thought sequences dialogue for The Girl on a Motorcycle (1968).
Biography
Born to Jewish parents Dr. Jack Freeman and his wife Freda (née Davids) in North London, she graduated in English Language and Literature from the University of Reading in 1951. She married Edward Thorpe, novelist and ballet critic of the Evening Standard, in 1955. They have two daughters, the actresses Harriet Thorpe and Matilda Thorpe.
One of her best known books was the 1961 novel The Leather Boys (published under the pseudonym Eliot George, a reference to the writer George Eliot), a story of a gay relationship between two young working-class men, later turned into a film for which she wrote the screenplay, this time under her own name. The novel was commissioned by the publisher Anthony Blond, who wanted a story about a "Romeo and Romeo in the South London suburbs". Her non-fiction book The Undergrowth of Literature (1967), was a pioneering study of pornography. In 1979, on another commission from Blond, she wrote a fictional diary, Nazi Lady: The Diaries of Elisabeth von Stahlenberg, 1938–48; Freeman's authorship was not at first revealed and many readers took it to be genuine. Her final book was But Nobody Lives in Bloomsbury (2006), a fictional study of the Bloomsbury Group.
Works
- The Liberty Man, 1955
- Fall of Innocence, 1956
- Jack Would be a Gentleman, 1959
- The Story of Albert Einstein, 1960
- The Leather Boys, 1961
- The Campaign, 1963
- The Leather Boys (screenplay), 1964
- Only Lovers Left Alive (screenplay), 1965
- The Leader, 1965
- The Undergrowth of Literature, 1967
- That Cold Day in the Park (screenplay), 1969
- An Evasion of Women (short play, alongside pieces by Shena Mackay, Margaret Drabble, and Maureen Duffy), 1969
- The Alabaster Egg, 1970
- I Want What I Want (screenplay), 1972
- The Marriage Machine, 1975
- The Schoolgirl Ethic: The Life and Work of Angela Brazil, 1976
- Mayerling (ballet scenario), 1978
- Intimate Letters (ballet scenario), 1978
- Nazi Lady: The Diaries of Elisabeth von Stahlenberg, 1938–48, 1979
- An Easter Egg Hunt, 1981
- Isadora (ballet scenario), 1981
- Lovechild, 1984
- Life Before Man, 1986
- Ballet Genius: Twenty Great Dancers of the Twentieth Century (with Edward Thorpe), 1988
- Termination Rock, 1989
- His Mistress's Voice, 2000
- But Nobody Lives in Bloomsbury, 2006
