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Compton-Burnett

/ -ˈbɜːnɪt; ˈkɒmptənbɜːˈnɛt /

noun

  1. Compton-BurnettIvy18841969FEnglishWRITING: novelist Dame Ivy. 1884–1969, English novelist. Her novels include Men and Wives (1931) and Mother and Son (1955)
“Collins English Dictionary — Complete & Unabridged” 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012


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Example Sentences

At first, she reads easier books by authors like Ivy Compton-Burnett and Nancy Mitford.

I can still close my eyes and see Samuel Shellabarger’s “Captain From Castile,” Alan Harrington’s “The Revelations of Dr. Modesto,” Ivy Compton-Burnett’s “A Father and His Fate,” and even a first American edition of “Lord of the Flies,” the very copy I would use when we studied William Golding’s classic in my 10th-grade English class.

She had been living in England and reading Ivy Compton-Burnett when she wrote it, and Compton-Burnett’s style infuses the pages of polyphonic dialogue.

Echoes of the British writer Ivy Compton-Burnett, whose influence deWitt acknowledges, are strong, with some of the funniest moments arising from the stylized dialogue.

"It's just a very chatty, bubbly, idiotic, or ridiculous conversation which is sort of my stock in trade and I love to work in that mode. Like Evelyn Waugh and Ivy Compton-Burnett, et cetera. But when I was looking away, the book became more serious for me and the tone shifted. Not to spoil it for anybody but by the end of the book we're delving into deeper, heavier territory. So I sat around and thought what kind of a book is this? It's not really a comedy."

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