Rosemary Manning

Manning was born on 9 December 1911 to Thomas Davys Manning and Mary Ann Coles in Weymouth, Dorset.[1] Her father was a doctor, but he had to resign his practice following a scandal; the family then moved to Sandhurst, Berkshire. Manning was sent to boarding school at Poltimore College in Poltimore House, Devon; her experiences there would later influence The Chinese Garden.[3] She studied at Royal Holloway College from 1930 to 1933 and graduated with a second class honours degree in Classics.[1]

She first worked in an Oxford Street department store then as a secretary.[1] In the 1930s, unhappy at work she suffered a nervous breakdown and was unsuccessfully treated at the Maudsley Hospital by unsympathetic doctors due to her lesbianism. Her former headmistress offered her teaching work and she stayed as a teacher for a further 35 years. In 1950 she moved with a friend to Hampstead, North London, to take over St Christopher's School, a long-established girls' preparatory school, where she became headmistress.[4]

In 1962 she broke up with her partner, and in April she tried to kill herself using the drug Luminal. However a suicide note was delivered promptly by the post office and help arrived. She was sad to find that she had failed.[1] Later that year she published The Chinese Garden which is mentioned above. The book is considered important as a lesbian novel.[5]

After retirement, she came out as a lesbian during a television interview in 1980.[1] In 1985 when the Greater London Council launched their Changing the World Lesbian and Gay Charter Manning was there at the launch. She appeared with Miriam Margolyes, Valerie Wise, Ken Livingstone, Jenni Fletcher and Jimmy Somerville.[6]