This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed.Find sources: "William Sansom" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (May 2015) (Learn how and when to remove this message)
William Sansom
Born
Norman Trevor Sansom

(1912-01-18)18 January 1912
London, England
Died20 April 1976(1976-04-20) (aged 64)
London, England
Occupations
  • Novelist
  • travel writer
  • short-story writer

William Norman Trevor Sansom[1] FRSL (born Norman Trevor Sansom; 18 January 1912 – 20 April 1976) was a British novelist, travel and short-story writer known for his highly descriptive prose style.

Profile

[edit]

Sansom was born in London, England, the third son of Ernest Brooks Sansom, MINA, a naval architect, by his wife Mabel (née Clark).[2][3] He was educated at Uppingham School, Rutland, before moving to Bonn to learn German. Named Norman Trevor Sansom at birth, he was called "William" as a child and used this name throughout his life.[3]

From 1930, Sansom worked in international banking for the British chapter of a German bank, and in 1935 he moved to an advertising company where he worked until the outbreak of World War II. Then he became a full-time London firefighter, serving throughout The Blitz. His experiences during that time inspired much of his writing, including many of the stories in the celebrated collection Fireman Flower. He also appeared in Humphrey Jennings's famous film about the Blitz, Fires Were Started, as the fireman who plays the piano.[citation needed]

After the war, Sansom became a full-time writer. In 1946 and 1947 he was awarded two literary prizes by the Society of Authors, and in 1951 was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. In 1954, he married actress Ruth Grundy, daughter of Norman Grundy, FCA. They had two sons, Sean (adopted by Sansom; the son of Ruth Grundy's previous marriage to Grey Wilson Blake[4]) and Nicholas.[2]

As well as exploring war-torn London, Sansom's writing deals with romance (The Face of Innocence), murder ("Various Temptations"), comedy ("A Last Word") and supernatural horror ("A Woman Seldom Found"). The latter, perhaps his most anthologized story, combines detailed description with narrative tension to unravel a young man's encounter with a bizarre creature in Rome.[citation needed]

Sansom died suddenly at St Mary's Hospital, London, from a serious illness.[5][6][7]

Selected works

[edit]

Novels

[edit]

Short novels

[edit]

Short story collections

[edit]

Non-fiction

[edit]

Children's literature

[edit]

As illustrator

[edit]

Citations

[edit]

In his classical work The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, Erving Goffman used an extended paragraph of Sansom's A Contest of Ladies to develop his model of the social role and the dramaturgical approach to sociology.[8]

References

[edit]
  1. ^ Michael Cox, The Concise Oxford Chronology of English Literature, Oxford University Press, 2005, p. 784.
  2. ^ a b Who Was Who, A. & C. Black, 1971.
  3. ^ a b World Authors, 1900–1950, volume 4, H. W. Wilson, 1996, p. 2296.
  4. ^ Everett Aaker, Encyclopedia of Early Television Crime Fighters, McFarland, 2006, p. 172.
  5. ^ The Times, 21 April 1976, Obituary- "Mr William Sansom: Author with loving eye for the London urban scene".
  6. ^ Obituary, The Guardian, 21 April 1976.
  7. ^ "William Sansom". Retrieved 18 January 2023.
  8. ^ Erving Goffman, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, Anchor Books, 1959, pp. 4ff.
[edit]
International
National
Artists
Other
Categories