# Olivia Manning
**Olivia Manning** (Olivia Mary Manning; 2 March 1908 – 23 July 1980) was a British novelist, poet, and reviewer best known for the six novels of the *Fortunes of War* sequence, the *Balkan Trilogy* and the *Levant Trilogy*, which draw on her wartime flight across eastern Europe and the Middle East with her husband, the [British Council](https://www.edgepedia.org/british-council) lecturer R. D. "Reggie" Smith[1](https://www.encyclopedia.com/women/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/manning-olivia-1908-1980) • [2](https://www.nyrb.com/collections/olivia-manning). She was born in Portsmouth, England, and died of a stroke in Ryde on the [Isle of Wight](https://www.edgepedia.org/isle-of-wight)[1](https://www.encyclopedia.com/women/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/manning-olivia-1908-1980).
| Key fact | Detail |
|---|---|
| Born / died | 2 March 1908, Portsmouth, England; 23 July 1980, Ryde, Isle of Wight (stroke)[1](https://www.encyclopedia.com/women/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/manning-olivia-1908-1980) |
| First novel | *The Wind Changes*, Jonathan Cape, April 1937; earlier fiction published under the pseudonym Jacob Morrow[3](https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2018/06/13/feminize-your-canon-olivia-manning/) |
| Marriage | Married R. D. "Reggie" Smith in 1939, a British Council lecturer posted to Bucharest[4](https://aspace.library.washu.edu/repositories/6/resources/357) |
| Wartime route | Bucharest, then Athens, Cairo, and Jerusalem, where the couple lived until the end of the war[2](https://www.nyrb.com/collections/olivia-manning) |
| Balkan Trilogy | *The Great Fortune* (1960), *The Spoilt City* (1962), *Friends and Heroes* (1965)[5](https://www.ebsco.com/research-starters/biography/olivia-manning/) |
| Levant Trilogy | *The Danger Tree* (1977), *The Battle Lost and Won* (1978), *The Sum of Things* (1980)[5](https://www.ebsco.com/research-starters/biography/olivia-manning/) |
| Honor | Commander of the Order of the British Empire, 1976[2](https://www.nyrb.com/collections/olivia-manning) |
## Early life and first publications
Manning was the elder child of Lieutenant-Commander Oliver Manning, a retired [Royal Navy](https://www.edgepedia.org/royal-navy) officer, and Olivia Morrow, the daughter of a publican from the north of Ireland[1](https://www.encyclopedia.com/women/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/manning-olivia-1908-1980) • [3](https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2018/06/13/feminize-your-canon-olivia-manning/). Her childhood was spent in [Portsmouth](https://www.edgepedia.org/portsmouth) and in the north of Ireland[6](https://www.stjohnswoodmemories.org.uk/content/arts/literature-writers/olivia_manning_1908_-_1980). She left school at sixteen and worked as a typist, taking evening classes at the Portsmouth Municipal School of Art; in May 1928 a painting of hers was selected for an exhibition at Southsea[4](https://aspace.library.washu.edu/repositories/6/resources/357). She moved to London in 1934, working as a delivery typist at the Peter Jones department store while writing in the evenings[3](https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2018/06/13/feminize-your-canon-olivia-manning/) • [6](https://www.stjohnswoodmemories.org.uk/content/arts/literature-writers/olivia_manning_1908_-_1980).
**Early publications.** Her first published works were three serialized detective novels, *Rose of Rubies*, *Here is Murder*, and *The Black Scarab*, which appeared in the *Portsmouth News* from 1929 under the pseudonym Jacob Morrow[4](https://aspace.library.washu.edu/repositories/6/resources/357). Between 1929 and 1935 she wrote about twenty short stories, and two literary novels that were rejected[4](https://aspace.library.washu.edu/repositories/6/resources/357). Her first serious novel, *The Wind Changes*, was published by [Jonathan Cape](https://www.edgepedia.org/jonathan-cape) in April 1937, helped by the editor Hamish Miles, who became her friend and lover before dying of a brain tumor at the end of that year[3](https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2018/06/13/feminize-your-canon-olivia-manning/). Miles also introduced her to the poet [Stevie Smith](https://www.edgepedia.org/stevie-smith), who remained a lifelong friend[3](https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2018/06/13/feminize-your-canon-olivia-manning/).
## The war years
In 1939, a year and a half after Miles died, Manning came to know Reggie Smith, an outgoing [Birmingham](https://www.edgepedia.org/birmingham) grammar-school alumnus with a heavy drinking habit who taught as a lecturer for the British Council, a state body created in 1934 to advance British education and anti-fascist ideals abroad[3](https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2018/06/13/feminize-your-canon-olivia-manning/). They married within two months; Manning gave the registrar a birth date that made her twenty-eight when she was in fact thirty-one[3](https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2018/06/13/feminize-your-canon-olivia-manning/). The couple took the [Orient Express](https://www.edgepedia.org/orient-express) back to [Bucharest](https://www.edgepedia.org/bucharest), arriving the day Britain and France declared war on Germany[3](https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2018/06/13/feminize-your-canon-olivia-manning/).
They soon fled the encroaching Nazi armies, first to Athens, then the following year to Cairo; in 1942 Smith took a job at the Palestine Broadcasting Service and the couple moved to Jerusalem, where they saw out the war[3](https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2018/06/13/feminize-your-canon-olivia-manning/). Manning wrote book reviews for the *Palestine Post* and kept careful notes of everything that might be useful in a future novel[3](https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2018/06/13/feminize-your-canon-olivia-manning/). She later served as a press officer for the American embassy at Cairo and as a press assistant at the Public Information Office in Jerusalem[5](https://www.ebsco.com/research-starters/biography/olivia-manning/).
## The Fortunes of War sequence
Manning returned to London in 1945 and took a job with the BBC, publishing through the late 1940s, but her first real success as a novelist came with *The Great Fortune* in 1960[3](https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2018/06/13/feminize-your-canon-olivia-manning/) • [7](https://www.penguin.co.uk/discover/articles/olivia-manning-balkan-trilogy-biography). The *Balkan Trilogy* follows the newlyweds Guy and Harriet Pringle, who arrive in Bucharest in the fall of 1939, weeks after the German invasion of Poland; Guy teaches English at the university while Romania joins the Axis and German soldiers overrun the capital, and the couple eventually flee south to Greece among a company of White Russians, journalists, con artists, and dignitaries[8](https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/235703/fortunes-of-war-the-balkan-trilogy-by-olivia-manning-introduction-by-rachel-cusk/). The *Levant Trilogy* continues the Pringles' story in Egypt and the desert war, with the point of view shifting at times to Simon Boulderstone, a soldier who takes part in the defeat of [Erwin Rommel](https://www.edgepedia.org/erwin-rommel)'s Panzer divisions at [El Alamein](https://www.edgepedia.org/el-alamein)[5](https://www.ebsco.com/research-starters/biography/olivia-manning/).
The sequence is built closely on Manning's own marriage and travels, following the course and chronology of her and Reggie's wartime movements and including dozens of barely disguised characters[9](https://www.standard.co.uk/culture/books/olivia-moaning-the-sad-artist-who-broke-the-mould-of-the-women-s-novel-8448370.html). Manning herself said, "My subject is simply life as I have experienced it, and I am happiest when writing of things I know"[1](https://www.encyclopedia.com/women/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/manning-olivia-1908-1980). Her biographer Deirdre David, author of *Olivia Manning: A Woman at War* ([Oxford University Press](https://www.edgepedia.org/oxford-university-press)), describes her method as meshing the life with the historical moment in which it was lived[7](https://www.penguin.co.uk/discover/articles/olivia-manning-balkan-trilogy-biography).
**Critical standing.** [Anthony Burgess](https://www.edgepedia.org/anthony-burgess), the novelist and critic, called the two trilogies possibly the "finest fictional record of the war produced by a British writer" and found in Manning a kinship with Tolstoy[8](https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/235703/fortunes-of-war-the-balkan-trilogy-by-olivia-manning-introduction-by-rachel-cusk/). Walter Allen, the English critic and author of *Tradition and Dream*, judged the first two volumes "one of the major works of the sixties in English fiction," praising the recreation of wartime Bucharest and the central marriage[10](https://www.enotes.com/topics/olivia-manning/criticism/manning-olivia-vol-19/walter-allen). Unlike [Evelyn Waugh](https://www.edgepedia.org/evelyn-waugh)'s war trilogy, Manning's account of the Balkans is neither comic in tone nor retrospective in focus[11](https://www.ebsco.com/research-starters/literature-and-writing/balkan-trilogy-olivia-manning).
## Recognition and reputation
Manning's career was marked by a persistent sense of being overlooked. *The Great Fortune* did not receive the accolades she hoped for, something that, in the account of her reissue editor, pockmarked her entire career[7](https://www.penguin.co.uk/discover/articles/olivia-manning-balkan-trilogy-biography). She resented the attention given to [Iris Murdoch](https://www.edgepedia.org/iris-murdoch), whom she called the "Glamour Girl of the Sunday Times," and made no secret of her dislike of Elizabeth Bowen[7](https://www.penguin.co.uk/discover/articles/olivia-manning-balkan-trilogy-biography). Her impatience earned her the nickname "Olivia Moaning" among friends[6](https://www.stjohnswoodmemories.org.uk/content/arts/literature-writers/olivia_manning_1908_-_1980). "I don't want fame when I'm dead," she said, "I want it now"[7](https://www.penguin.co.uk/discover/articles/olivia-manning-balkan-trilogy-biography).
**Near-misses and late validation.** In 1974 her tenth novel, *The Rain Forest*, was "called in" by the Booker Prize judges but failed to make the short list; judge A. S. Byatt said on the radio that she found the novel slow[3](https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2018/06/13/feminize-your-canon-olivia-manning/). Her final years brought some recognition: *The Danger Tree* was named the *Yorkshire Post*'s Best Novel of 1977, an award worth two hundred fifty pounds, a hundred pounds less than the nonfiction prize, as she noted to her husband[3](https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2018/06/13/feminize-your-canon-olivia-manning/). She was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1976[2](https://www.nyrb.com/collections/olivia-manning).
**Posthumous reach.** Seven years after her death, in 1987, the BBC aired *Fortunes of War*, a seven-part adaptation of both trilogies starring Emma Thompson and Kenneth Branagh, with the highest budget in BBC history[3](https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2018/06/13/feminize-your-canon-olivia-manning/). The American broadcast on *Masterpiece Theatre* prompted the *New York Times* to call Manning "the only English woman novelist to have painted a broad, compassionate and witty canvas of men and women at war that invites comparison with Anthony Powell and Evelyn Waugh"[3](https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2018/06/13/feminize-your-canon-olivia-manning/). Two biographies followed: one by her friends Neville and June Braybrooke in 2004, and Deirdre David's *Olivia Manning: A Woman at War*[6](https://www.stjohnswoodmemories.org.uk/content/arts/literature-writers/olivia_manning_1908_-_1980).
## Other work
Beyond the trilogies, Manning wrote some two dozen novels between her early twenties and her death[7](https://www.penguin.co.uk/discover/articles/olivia-manning-balkan-trilogy-biography). Her other long fiction includes *Artist Among the Missing* (1949), *School for Love* (1951), *A Different Face* (1953), *Doves of Venus* (1955), *The Play Room* (1969), and *The Rain Forest* (1974)[5](https://www.ebsco.com/research-starters/biography/olivia-manning/). *School for Love*, set in wartime Jerusalem, drew praise from the novelist and scientist C. P. Snow in the *Sunday Times* as "deep, sharp, and narrow … remarkable"[3](https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2018/06/13/feminize-your-canon-olivia-manning/). She also wrote short fiction, including the collections *Growing Up* (1948) and *A Romantic Hero, and Other Stories* (1967), and nonfiction including *The Reluctant Rescue* (1947), an account of Stanley's rescue of Emin Pasha from equatorial Africa, also published as *The Remarkable Expedition*[5](https://www.ebsco.com/research-starters/biography/olivia-manning/). In addition, she wrote essays and criticism, a screenplay, and a book about Burmese and Siamese cats[2](https://www.nyrb.com/collections/olivia-manning).
## References
1. [Manning, Olivia (1908–1980), Encyclopedia.com](https://www.encyclopedia.com/women/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/manning-olivia-1908-1980)
2. [Olivia Manning, New York Review Books](https://www.nyrb.com/collections/olivia-manning)
3. [Emma Garman, "Feminize Your Canon: Olivia Manning," The Paris Review, 13 June 2018](https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2018/06/13/feminize-your-canon-olivia-manning/)
4. [Olivia Manning Letter, Washington University Libraries, Department of Special Collections](https://aspace.library.washu.edu/repositories/6/resources/357)
5. [Olivia Manning, Biography, EBSCO Research Starters](https://www.ebsco.com/research-starters/biography/olivia-manning/)
6. [Bridget Clarke, "Olivia Manning, 1908–1980," St John's Wood Memories](https://www.stjohnswoodmemories.org.uk/content/arts/literature-writers/olivia_manning_1908_-_1980)
7. [Alice Vincent, "Olivia Manning: literature's brilliant, overlooked woman of war," Penguin, 17 March 2021](https://www.penguin.co.uk/discover/articles/olivia-manning-balkan-trilogy-biography)
8. [Fortunes of War: The Balkan Trilogy, Penguin Random House](https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/235703/fortunes-of-war-the-balkan-trilogy-by-olivia-manning-introduction-by-rachel-cusk/)
9. [Claire Harman, "'Olivia Moaning' — the sad artist who broke the mould of the women's novel," London Evening Standard, 11 January 2013](https://www.standard.co.uk/culture/books/olivia-moaning-the-sad-artist-who-broke-the-mould-of-the-women-s-novel-8448370.html)
10. [Walter Allen, "War and Post War: British," eNotes criticism](https://www.enotes.com/topics/olivia-manning/criticism/manning-olivia-vol-19/walter-allen)
11. [The Balkan Trilogy by Olivia Manning, EBSCO Research Starters](https://www.ebsco.com/research-starters/literature-and-writing/balkan-trilogy-olivia-manning)
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*Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Literature and written works › Writers and literary biographies › Fiction writers: novelists and genre › British and Irish literary novelists › British and Irish novelists after 1945*
*Initially written Sep 17, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026*
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License: Edgepedia Community License 1.0, https://www.edgepedia.org/edgepedia/license