Compton-Burnett was born in Pinner, educated priavtely, and then went on to Royal Holloway Women's College to read Classics, gaining a BA in 1906. She acted as a governess to her younger siblings following the death of their mother in 1911. The brother to whom she was closest died shortly before she gained her BA; another brother died in the First World War; and her two youngest sisters committed joint suicide in 1918.

Compton-Burnett suffered from a long physical and mental breakdown during the eraly 1920s. She lived her life with the writer, editor, and antique expert Margaret Jourdain until Jourdain's death in 1951, but never articulated anything about this domestic situation in her novels.

She composed her novels almost entirely in dialogue, to show reactions of small groups of characters dominated by the tyranny of family relationships. Her novels are set at the turn of the century, and set in large, gloomy, dilapidated houseswith a high rate of domestic crime ranging from adultery, incest, and child abuse to murder and fraud.

Her novels contain lesbian and gay characters, however homosexuality is not constructed as something permanent but as something one grows out of. In the age of concentration camp, when from 1935 to 1947, she wrote her very beast novels illuminating the springs of human cruelty, suffering and bravery. She was made a Dame of the British Empire in 1967.

Works:

Dolores (1911) Pastors and Masters (1925) Brothers and Sisters (1929) Men and Wives (1931) More Women than Men (1933) A House and its Head (1935) Daughters and Sons (1937) A Family and a Fortune (1939) Parents and Children (1941) Elders and Betters (1944)

Manservant and Maidservant (1947) Two Worlds and Their Ways (1949) Darkness and Day (1951) The Present and the Past (1953) Mother and Son (1955) A Father and His Fate (1957) A Heritage and Its History (1959) The Mighty and Their Fall (1961) A God and His Gifts (1963) The Last and the First (1969)

Source: excerpts from: Gabriele Griffin, Who's Who in Lesbian and Gay and Writing, Routledge, London, 2002