Lyn Irvine

Lyn Lloyd Newman (née Irvine; 3 May 1901 – 19 May 1973) was a literary journalist and writer. She was born in Berwick-upon-Tweed, the daughter of John A. Irvine, a Presbyterian minister, and his Irish wife Lilian; Andrew Irvine, who died on Mount Everest, was her first cousin. After studying at the University of Aberdeen and Girton College, Cambridge, she moved to London and published poems and reviews. Some of these were published by Leonard Woolf, then literary editor of the Nation and Athenaeum, with whom Lyn formed a long friendship. In 1931, the Hogarth Press published her first book, Ten Letter Writers, increasing her recognition within the Bloomsbury Group and beyond. In 1934, she started a literary subscription journal, The Monologue, which she very largely wrote, printed and published herself. Subscribers included Clive and Julian Bell, Elizabeth Bowen, Graham Greene, Maynard Keynes, Vita Sackville-West, and Leonard and Virginia Woolf, Irvine ended the journal in February 1935.