Phyllis Bottome
British writer (1884–1963)
Phyllis Forbes Dennis (née Bottome bə-TOHM; 31 May 1882 – 22 August 1963) was a British novelist and short story writer. The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography said of her, "In her long career Bottome wrote on a wide range of subjects in several genres, producing popular, feminist novels and, in her non-fiction, raising the public's awareness of political dangers; her recurring theme was personal freedom."
Life and career
Bottome was born in 1882, in Rochester, Kent, the daughter of an American clergyman, Rev. William MacDonald Bottome, and an Englishwoman, Mary (Leatham) Bottome.
In 1901, following the death of her sister Wilmett from tuberculosis, Bottome was diagnosed with the same disease. She travelled to St Moritz in the hope that this would improve her health as mountain air was perceived as better for patients with tuberculosis.
In 1917, in Paris, she married Alban Ernan Forbes Dennis, a British diplomat working, first, in Marseilles and then in Vienna as Passport Control Officer, a cover for his real role as MI6 Head of Station with responsibility for Austria, Hungary and Yugoslavia. They had met in 1904 at a villa in St Moritz, where Bottome was lodging.
Bottome studied individual psychology under Alfred Adler, and was his patient, while in Vienna. Later, in 1939, she wrote a biography of him (Alfred Adler: Apostle of Freedom) at his behest: in her preface she writes, "I fully realize my lack of qualifications in undertaking the great task of writing Adler's life; but it was a task laid upon me by Adler himself."
In 1924 she and her husband started a school in Kitzbühel in Austria. Based on the teaching of languages, the school was intended to be a community and an educational laboratory to determine how psychology and educational theory could cure the ills of nations.
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Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 21, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q2089198. VIAF identifies the subject as 25691064. The Library of Congress control number is n50067190. 3 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1882, 1963, 1901 and 1917.
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This entry incorporates text from “Phyllis Bottome” 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.