Elizabeth Sprigge
English novelist, biographer, translator, and children's writer
Elizabeth Miriam Squire Sprigge (10 June 1900, in Kensington – 9 December 1974) was an English novelist, biographer, translator, and children's writer.
Biography
Elizabeth Sprigge was the elder daughter of Sir Samuel Squire Sprigge, editor of The Lancet. On 23 July 1921 she married Mark Napier-Clavering (1898–1983), a business agent employed by Debenhams, who on 27 May 1924 dropped 'Clavering' from his name by deed poll, it having been adopted by his grandfather, Rev. John Warren Napier. He was a descendant of Francis Napier, 8th Lord Napier. They were divorced in 1945, having had two daughters: Julyan Napier (1922–2005) and Ruth Napier (1923–1996).
From her late twenties until the end of her life, Elizabeth Sprigge published steadily. She might be best remembered for her 1973 biography of her long-time friend Ivy Compton-Burnett. According to Joyce Carol Oates, Hilary Spurling's "exhaustively researched" Life of I. Compton-Burnett (Knopf, 1984) ".. seems to follow the general outline set by Elizabeth Sprigge's memoir-biography...
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Elizabeth Sprigge” as english novelist, biographer, translator, and children's writer. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The subject matters to the people & ideas register because the source frames it as english novelist, biographer, translator, and children's writer. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 3, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q21589064. VIAF identifies the subject as 115784048. The Library of Congress control number is n50038459. 4 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 1 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1900, 1974, 1921 and 1898.
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This entry incorporates text from “Elizabeth Sprigge” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.