In an effort to do more interesting things on this blog, I will be introducing biographies of historic figures!
While reading a fantastic book by David Remnick called
Lenin's Tomb, I came across a mention of a woman who instantly caught my attention; Ivy Litvinov. So I did what I always do when I'm curious: Google.
On angelfire.com, I found the following lovely biography. Enjoy this excerpt!
Ivy Litvinov (nee Low) (1889-1977)
Ivy was born in London in 1889, her father - Walter Low, died when she was five years old. Her mother, Alice Baker remarried in 1896.
Ivy Low, 1913 while working at the Prudential Assurance Co. Ltd, had her first novel published Growing Pains - "in which the heroine tells her own story of the comic tragedy of her progress to womanhood" - (Samuel Lipman). In 1914 it was followed by The Questing Beast - "a torrid (for its time) account of office life and the sexual pitfalls of loneliness" - (Samuel Lipman - "The new Criterion", 1984). She also had literary friends such as D.H. Lawrence, Viola Meynell and Catherine Carswell.
Ivy met Maxim Litvinov just after the onset of the First World War. In 1916 they were married in Hampstead and in 1917 Misha was born followed by Tanya in 1918.
Maxim returned to Russia towards the end of 1918, later becoming the Soviet Foreign Minister. Ivy followed him two years later.
Ivy became a translator, and also wrote the novel His Masters Voice in 1930. During the period 1941 - 1943 Maxim was appointed Soviet Ambassador to the United States and was replaced by Andrei Gromyko.
Maxim returned to Russia as deputy Foreign Minister under Molotov but lost this position about 1946. He died in 1951.
Ivy stayed on in Russia working mainly as a teacher of music/English and translator. She made a short visit to England in 1960 and returned permanently in 1972 residing in Hove. Her daughter Tanya joined her about 1976 and she continued writing short stories, some being published in The New Yorker. In 1971 several of her short stories were published in She Knew She Was Right.
Authors, some of whose works were translated by Ivy, sometimes in conjunction with her daughter Tanya (Tatiana), include Alexei Tolstoy, Sergeevich Turgenev, Anton Checkhov.
Ivy Litvinov died in April 1977
From what I found in Lenin's Tomb, Ivy was a lot more interesting than even this biography shows. Above, it states that her husband worked for the USSR. Now, they were- to put it mildly- pretty uptight about the behavior of their apparatchiks. And yet, some how... Ivy Litvinov was a British swinger who had (WHILE IN SOVIET RUSSIA) a string of lovers, both male and female. She was herself, and in the time and place she lived, that was a hell of an accomplishment.
