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Common Knowledge

Canonical name: Raverat, Gwen
Legal name: Darwin, Gwendoline Mary
Raverat, Gwendoline Mary Darwin
Birthdate: 1885-08-26
Date of death: 1957-02-11
Burial location: Trumpington Extension Cemetery, Cambridge, England, UK
Gender: female
Nationality: UK
Birthplace: Cambridge, Cambridgeshire, England, UK
Place of death: Cambridge, Cambridgeshire, England, UK
Places of residence: Cambridge, Cambridgeshire, England, UK
Vence, Alpes-Maritimes, France
Education: Slade School of Art
Occupations: illustrator
wood engraving artist
scenic designer
author
memoirist
Relationships: Darwin, Charles (grandfather)
Darwin, George Howard (father)
Darwin, Charles Galton (brother)
Barlow, Nora (cousin)
Cornford, Frances (cousin)
Darwin, Bernard (cousin) (show all 14)
Darwin, Elinor (cousin's husband|taught engraving by)
Keynes, Geoffrey (brother-in-law)
Keynes, Milo (nephew)
Keynes, Quentin (nephew)
Keynes, Richard (nephew)
Pryor, William (grandson)
Raverat, Anna (granddaughter)
Vaughan Williams, Ralph (second cousin)
Organizations: Society of Wood Engravers (co-founder)
Awards and honors: Blue Plaque
Short biography: Gwen Raverat was born Gwendoline Mary Darwin in Cambridge, England, a daughter of Sir George Howard Darwin and his wife Lady Maud du Puy, and a granddaughter of Charles Darwin. She attended the Slade School of Art. In 1911, she married Jacques Raverat, a French painter, and was active with him in the Bloomsbury Group. They moved to Vence, in the south of France, and had two daughters. In 1928, after her husband's death, she returned to live near Cambridge. She was one of the first modern wood engravers. One of her first wood engravings to appear in a book was Lord Thomas and Fair Annet in The Open Window (1911). She produced one of the first two modern books illustrated with wood engravings, Spring Morning (1915), by her cousin Frances Cornford. Much of her work was done for friends from Cambridge and appeared in books with small editions. The London Mercury also reproduced many of her engravings. She also designed costumes, scenery and program for the theater. Her memoir Period Piece: A Cambridge Childhood, which she illustrated with line drawings, appeared in 1952 and has not been out of print since then.

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Reviews

Period Piece: the Cambridge childhood of Darwin's… by Gwen Raverat

Wood engraver of the Bloomsbury Group. Raverat's down-to-earth reminiscences of her childhood in Cambridge, which sounds idyllic though she constantly grumbles about the restrictions of clothes, dancing class, having to attend church, and other hateful things, like the skin on boiled milk. Well written, well illustrated, funny and entertaining. Includes a short story about a little girl, Georgette, in the French town of Vence

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overthemoon | 6 other reviews | Aug 1, 2020 |

Period Piece by Gwen Raverat

Funny, thoughtful and vivid - with marvellous illustrations.

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Litotes | 6 other reviews | Aug 27, 2015 |

Period Piece - A Cambridge Childhood by Gwen Raverat

The preface to this book states 'This is a circular book. It does not begin at the beginning and go on to the end; it is all going on at the same time, sticking out like the spokes of a wheel from the hub, which is me. So it does not matter which chapter is read first or last'. That seems a pretty accurate description of this sweet, rambling autobiographical look into Cambridge at the turn of the century before the wars. Gwen, the granddaughter of Charles Darwin, is in an enviably priviledged position, although she has a wry eye for the constraints that that places upon her. I must confess, I think I loved this book mostly because I love Cambridge. The viewpoints it gives you on things I have taken forgranted for a long time - where the Mill pub is now there was once a Mill! Punts in Cambridge are a relatively new innovation! - were fascinating.… (more)

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atreic | 6 other reviews | Apr 7, 2014 |

Period Piece by Gwen Raverat

When your grandfather is Charles Darwin and you can also claim Josiah Wedgewood as an ancestor, it is to be expected that your family might not fit the run of the mill Edwardian and Victorian mold. Gwen Raverat's look back at her childhood is both enchanting and enlightening for its look at this extraordinary family with its scientists, artists, musicians and thinkers, but also for its snapshot of an era. Gwen's drawings of family members, homes, and events, are peppered throughout this reprint of her memoir in this lovely little Slightly Foxed Edition.

She begins by describing her home, Newnham Grange in Cambridge. moving through chapters named Theories, Education, Ladies, Propriety, followed by one of my favourite chapters, "Aunt Etty", a loving description of and tribute to her beloved Aunt Etty (Henrietta, one of Charles Darwin's daughters). The chapter about the Darwin family home, Down House, with its mulberry tree outside the nursery window and her cherished grandmamma in residence was another favourite. "Ghosts and Horrors" describes some of the nasty things which haunt childhood, including bullies who are cruel to animals and a group of Cambridge students carrying the body of a woman down the street at night.

Her chapter about her five uncles with her descriptions of the traits and characteristics of Uncle William, Uncle George (her father), Uncle Frank, Uncle Lenny, and Uncle Horace, was nothing short of brilliant for its acute observation of each man, his place in the family, and the view in which he was held by others. These were the sons of Charles Darwin, each as individual and different from the other as brothers can be, and yet very much family in their affection and regard for each other.

The chapter headed "Religion" was great fun, as you would expect from a granddaughter of Charles Darwin. This was followed by "Sport", "Clothes" (which she detested), and "Society" (in which she always felt extremely awkward, shy, and uncomfortable).

Sharp, acerbic, wonderfully funny and irreverent, I know I would have loved Gwen Raverat (nee Darwin) in person, should I have been lucky enough to get past her shy and prickly antisocial exterior to get to know her. She lets us in with this book, writing of her memories and experiences in a way which kept me engaged to the last word. Her drawings are so good, whether capturing her young self being forced to act as a kind of chaperon, a family outing on tricycles with the family spaniel trudging along behind, or running along a nine foot high wall in the garden by the river. It's a look at an era which I only had a whiff of through my own grandparents, guessed at from the silver button hooks on my Nana's dresser along with the hair jar where one put one's hair after cleaning one's hairbrush. An era of horse drawn vehicles, spats, gas light, whale bone corsets, layers and layers of clothing, innumerable rules and regulations for behaviour, all gone except for backward peeks in a gem of a book like this.… (more)