Princess Elizabeth Bibesco: a Novelist of the 1920s

Abstract

Princess Elizabeth Bibesco (1897-1945) was the daughter of Sir Herbert Henry Asquith, Prime Minister of Great Britain between 1908 and 1916, and wife of Prince Antoine Bibesco (1878-1951). During the 1920s Bibesco published two novels The Fir and the Palm and There Is No Return which include her into the same spiritual family as the literary impressionists of the time. Critics did not pay too much attention to this novelist of the 1920s who holds, however, a singular place in the literary life of the time. This paper is a close reading of Bibesco’s novels from the 1920 which proves her indebtedness to modernism and literary impressionism.