Name William Sansom Role Novelist | Education Uppingham School | |
 | ||
Died April 20, 1976, London, United Kingdom Books Various Temptations, The Stories of William Sansom, The face of innocence, The Blitz: Westminster at War, A bed of roses | ||
William Norman Trevor Sansom FRSL (18 January 1912 – 20 April 1976) was a British novelist, travel and short story writer known for his highly descriptive prose style.
Contents
Profile
Sansom was born in London, the third son of Ernest Brooks Sansom, M.I.N.A., a naval architect, by his wife Mabel (née Clark). He was educated at Uppingham School, Rutland, before moving to Bonn to learn German. Named 'Norman Trevor' at birth, he was called 'William' as a child and used this name throughout his life.
From 1930 onwards, Sanson worked in international banking for the British chapter of a German bank, but moved to an advertising company in 1935, where he worked until the outbreak of World War II. At this time he became a full-time London firefighter, serving throughout The Blitz. His experiences during this time inspired much of his writing, including many of the stories found in the celebrated collection Fireman Flower. He also appeared in Humphrey Jennings's famous film about the Blitz, Fires Were Started- Sansom is the fireman who plays the piano.
After the war, Sanson became a full-time writer. In 1946 and 1947 he was awarded two literary prizes by the Society of Authors, and in 1951 was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. In 1954, He married actress Ruth Grundy, daughter of Norman Grundy, FCA, and had two sons, Sean (adopted by Sansom; the son of Ruth Grundy's previous marriage, to Grey Wilson Blake) and Nicholas.
As well as exploring war-torn London, Sanson's writing deals with romance (The Face of Innocence), murder ('Various Temptations'), comedy ('A Last Word') and supernatural horror ('A Woman Seldom Found'). The latter, perhaps his most anthologized story, combines detailed description with narrative tension to unravel a young man's encounter with a bizarre creature in Rome.
Sansom died in London.
Citations
In his classical work The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, Erving Goffman used an extended paragraph of Sansom's A Contest of Ladies to develop his model of the social role and the dramaturgical approach to sociology.