Edith Templeton Biography

British novelist, born in Prague, educated at the French Lycée and Prague Medical University; she settled eventually in England and married a doctor, later moving with her husband to India, where he was appointed physician to the King of Nepal. Her first story was published at the age of ten; her first novel, Summer in the Country (1950), is set in her native Bohemia, where an impoverished minor noble family quarrels amongst itself and ignores a murder. Further novels include Living on Yesterday (1951), The Island of Desire (1952), set in Prague and Paris, and This Cheering Pastime (1955), set mainly in Sicily. Her sophisticated novels often concern ignorant, wilful, and passionate young women, who are the victims of demanding and impossible men. She has also written many short stories and articles for Vogue, Harper's, and the New Yorker, as well as a fascinating book of memoirs and travels, The Surprise of Cremona (1954).