Patricia Avis, 1928-77

I've just come across a novel by a former mistress of the poet Philip Larkin. Her name was Patricia Avis. She was born in South Africa, in 1928 to a Dutch father and an Irish mother. She grew up in London and her father who was very well off, sent her to college. She studied medicine but when she qualified she never worked as a doctor. She married a lecturer, Colin Strang, and moved to Belfast where he had a job. She met Philip Larkin, who was a librarian at the University there, and they had an affair. They were in love for a time and she became pregnant but miscarried. Her marriage to Colin Strang did not last long.. she had other lovers, and left Strang. She wanted to be a writer and she wrote poems and edited magazines. But her novel writing was not all that successful. She married an Anglo Irish poet Richard Murphy in the 1950's, and they lived in Ireland. She did a lot of reading, especially of French literature, and tried to form a social circle of writers and intellectuals in Ireland. She and Murphy had a daughter and she then got a divorce, leaving her child with her father. She settled in Dublin and wrote a novel Playing the Harlot about her university days and friends... but her publisher felt it was too critical of the writers that they both knew. She became addicted to alcohol and went on trying to write. But her one novel is rather rambling and does not seem to have a point. She committed suicide in 1977.