Being connected is what these four sisters are famous for and why their names pop up in so many biographies and why this biography was written. It is sad and a bit dull because their lives did not turn out the way their early promise seemed to lead. Their father was well known and received a title for his work, the eldest daughter spent over forty years in a mental institution, another sister met Rudolph Steiner and that led her to start the first Steiner school in England, a third was a doctor when women faced horrendous obstacles in medicine and the last and most beautiful divorced at a time when fewer than 2000 women a year got a divorce and it was publicized in the paper and there was scandal. The doctor was loved by Rupert Brook the poet before his death in WWI and held his biographers at bay over his letters for her entire life. They knew all the rich and famous people of their time including Virginia Woolf, H.G.Wells, CS Lewis etc. They were traveled and educated and beautiful and had approximately 16 children between them. Their aunt wrote books and a Laurence Olivier was a cousin. David 'Bunny' Garnett grew up with them and loved them. They lived through two world wars and are remembered.

Blurb written by someone else:

Interesting women have secrets. They also ought to have sisters.'

From the beginning of their lives, the Olivier sisters stood out: surprisingly emancipated, strikingly beautiful, markedly determined, and alarmingly 'wild'. Rupert Brooke was said to be in love with all four of them; D. H. Lawrence thought they were frankly 'wrong'; Virginia Woolf found them curiously difficult to read.

The sisters seemed always to be one step ahead of their time. Margery and Daphne studied at Cambridge when education was still thought by some to be damaging to ovaries. Noel became a doctor; Daphne a pioneering teacher; Margery's promising trajectory was shot down by mental illness; Brynhild, the great beauty of the four, excelled as a Bloomsbury hostess yet gave it up for love and a life of uncertainty.

In this intimate, sweeping biography, Sarah Watling brings the sisters in from the margins, tracing lives that span colonial Jamaica, the bucolic life of Victorian progressives, the frantic optimism of Edwardian Cambridge, the bleakness of two world wars, and a host of evolving philosophies for life over the course of the twentieth century.

Noble Savages is a compelling portrait of sisterhood in all its complexities, which rediscovers the lives of four extraordinary women within the varied fortunes of the feminism of their times, while illuminating the battles and ethics of biography itself.

My comment:
Reading this because it links to so many other lives and diaries, letters, biographies I have read...the sisters are mentioned so often in other people's books that I decided to see what all the fuss was about and found the book dull. I plodded through it and thought that the Mitford sisters were so much more interesting. It was a bit depressing how these beautiful girls with so much potential and promise just seemed to dissipate it all and lose their way.

Blurb:
Margery, Brynhild, Daphne, and Noel Olivier were well-educated, socially privileged, precocious, striking, scandalous, engaging, and so closely knit that they were the objects of fascination and admiration both during their lives and long after. Here, Sarah Watling offers a group portrait of the sisters as they lived and negotiated the turbulent changes of the first half of the twentieth century, each one devoted to the other but choosing and pursuing her own extraordinary path. After a childhood spent in colonial Jamaica (where their father was governor), the sisters became members of the Neo-Pagan group that gathered around the poet Rupert Brooke in Cambridge, and helped orchestrate that group's encounters with Bloomsbury. Drawn first to Brynhild's oft-remarked-upon beauty, Brooke ultimately fell in love with the schoolgirl Noel, complicating the sisters' relationships for years to come. Noel would go on to become a medical doctor during World War I, Daphne to set up the first Steiner school in England. Watling brings the Olivier sisters from the margins to the main stage of history, providing a window onto early feminism, wartime, progressive politics, twentieth-century medicine's relationship with women, and post-war culture. A Who's Who cast of famous figures of the period rotates through the book--including George Bernard Shaw, H. G. Wells, C. S. Lewis, and Rudolf Steiner, as well as members of the Bloomsbury group, including Virginia Woolf and John Maynard Keynes--but at the heart of it is a portrait of sisterhood in all its complexities and in all its personal and political guises. This is the first book to focus on the Oliviers themselves, and to do their rich story full justice.


( )

Nobele Wilden. De Oliviers: Vier vrouwenlevens. Door Sarah Watling.

Al bijna een week vertoef ik in het gezelschap van Margery, Daphne, Brynhild en Noel. 552 boeiende pagina’s lang.

Ik ben een veellezer, een snelle lezer; 6 dagen over 552 pagina’s doen is traag, voor mij. Dat komt niet doordat het boek saai is of slecht geschreven. Wel doordat het immens rijk gedocumenteerd is, het staat tjokvol feiten, data en namen; persoonlijke maar ook geschiedkundig/maatschappelijk relevante. Dat maakt dat je elk woord van dit boek wil lezen, geen letter wil je overslaan.

Nobele Wilden is een biografie van 4 levenslustige, actieve, feministische, avontuurlijke zussen die hun tijd op vele vlakken ver vooruit waren. Het verhaal begint in de jaren ’80 van de 19de eeuw met de kindertijd van de zussen en volgt hun wedervaren gedurende 7 belangrijke periodes, eindigen doen we in1969 (2 wereldoorlogen en een hele andere wereld op allerlei vlakken later).

Naast een biografie van 4 vrijgevochten meisjes is dit ook een ode aan het zusterschap (op familiaal en feministisch vlak). We krijgen een inkijkje in het ontstaan van de vrouwenbeweging, de Neo-Pagans, de suffragettes, de opkomst van de antroposofie, het leven in Jamaica, het behandelen van geesteszieken, vrouwenrechten … En, niet onbelangrijk, vele leden van dé Bloomsburygroep (zoals Virginia Woolf) passeren de revue.

Wetende dat de zussen en vooral Noel geen voorstander zijn van het delen van biografische informatie is het een beetje onkies om dit boek te lezen (en te schrijven, wat Watling ook toegeeft). Maar het feit dat alle betrokkenen al lang overleden zijn én het feit dat dit echt een eerbetoon is aan de Oliviers, met eerbied en respect voor hun niet-conventionele levensstijl en de daaruit soms moeilijk te begrijpen levenskeuzes maakt dit goed. Vier vrouwenlevens is een gigantisch boeiend meesterwerk. Geschreven vanuit zusterschap. Onmisbaar in de boekenkast van elke (literaire) feministe. Bedankt Watling voor dit indrukwekkend meesterwerk; een debuut dat smeekt naar meer. ( )