Joan Bennett (literary scholar)

Joan Bennett (1896–1986), also known as Joan Frankau and born Aline Frankau, was a Cambridge literary scholar and critic. She was among the "constellation of critics" called by the defence in the Lady Chatterley Trial of D. H. Lawrence.^[1]

Life and career

Bennett was the daughter of London cigar importer Arthur Frankau (1849-1904) and writer Julia Frankau (1859-1916).^[2] Though she was known as Joan throughout her life, she was christened Aline.^[3] She married the Cambridge literary historian Henry Stanley Bennett (1889-1972) in 1920.^[4]

As a don at Girton College, Cambridge, Bennett wrote one of the first critical studies of Virginia Woolf.^[5]

As one of the expert witnesses in the Lady Chatterley Trial, she helped counter the arguments of the prosecution by confirming Lawrence's reputation as a novelist, that the work was more than a description of sexual encounters, and that Lawrence's repeated use of ‘four-letter words’ were justified by literary intent.^[6] Bennett's mother had earlier been credited by Mrs Belloc Lowndes with having been "one of the very few to recognise the genius of D. H. Lawrence".^[7]

Works

Publications by Joan Bennett include—

• Four Metaphysical Poets – Donne, Herbert, Vaughan, Crashaw, Cambridge University Press 1934
• Virginia Woolf – Her Art as a Novelist, Cambridge University Press 1945
• George Eliot – Her Mind and her Art, Cambridge University Press 1948
• Sir Thomas Browne – "A Man of Achievement in Literature", Cambridge University Press 1962
• Five Metaphysical Poets – Donne, Herbert, Vaughan, Crashaw, Marvell, Cambridge University Press 1964

Further reading

• C. H. Rolph (ed.), The Trial of Lady Chatterley: Regina v. Penguin Books Limited, Penguin Books 1961
• Aryeh Newman, "From exile to exit: the Frankau Jewish connection", The Jewish Quarterly Vol. 34 No. 4 (128), 1987
• Todd M. Endelman, "The Frankaus of London: A Study in Radical Assimilation, 1837-1967", Jewish History Vol. 8 Nos 1-2, 1994
• Derek Brewer, A list of his writings presented to H. S. Bennett on his eightieth birthday, 15th January 1969, Cambridge University Press 1969

References and notes

1. ↑ Squires, Michael (ed.) (1993). Lady Chatterley's Lover and "À Propos of Lady Chatterley's Lover". Cambridge University Press. pp. xxxviii–xxxix. 
2. ↑ Rubenstein, William D. (2011). The Palgrave Dictionary of Anglo-Jewish History. Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 9780230304666. 
3. ↑ Gilbert Frankau, Self-Portrait, Hutchinson 1940 p82
4. ↑ Gilbert Frankau, Self-Portrait, Hutchinson 1940 p234
5. ↑ Roden, Frederick S. Jewish/Christian/Queer: Crossroads and Identities Queer Interventions, Ashgate Publishing, 2009 ISBN 0754673758, p. 183
6. ↑ Carter, Phillip. "Lady Chatterley's Lover trial (act. 1960)". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. 
7. ↑ Mrs Belloc Lowndes, The Merry Wives of Westminster, Macmillan 1946 p62