FREMANTLE, Anne(-Marie Huth) 1910-2002

OBITUARY NOTICE—See index for CA sketch: Born June 15, 1910, in Tresserve, Savoie, France; died December 26, 2002, in London, England. Author. Fremantle was an author whose writings, both fiction and nonfiction, were often colored by her devout religious beliefs. She attended Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford, where she studied modern languages and earned her master's degree in history in 1932; she also later graduated from the London School of Economics and Political Science. Fremantle began her career as a London-based journalist in 1931, freelancing as a writer for the New Statesman, Times Literary Supplement, Spectator, and Mercury. Her interest in politics led her, in 1935, to unsuccessfully run for office as a Labor Party candidate. During World War II she was an ambulance driver and also worked for the British Broadcasting Corporation as a broadcaster. In 1940 she moved to the United States to work as a research assistant for the British Embassy; she decided to remain in North America after the war and became a U.S. citizen in 1947, finding work as a writer for Commonweal magazine, as an editor for the Catholic Book Club from 1947 to 1965, and as a book reviewer for other periodicals. From 1950 to 1961 Fremantle was a part-time editor at the United Nations, and from 1961 to 1962 she had her own television program on NBC. Fremantle also spent part of her time as a lecturer and visiting professor at such institutions as Fordham University, Wesleyan University, and New York University. Religion was an important subject for Fremantle, who converted to Islam as a nine year old, and then to Catholicism when she was thirty-three. Many of her edited works are consequently concerned with religion, including A Treasury of Early Christianity (1953) and The Social Teachings of the Church (1963); she also edited works on literary subjects, such as Latin-American Literature Today (1977). But Fremantle became best known after World War II for editing the three-volume The Wynne Diaries, 1789-1820 (1936, 1937, 1939), a collection of correspondence between one of her husband's ancestors and his beloved, and for The Age of Belief (1955) about medieval philosophy. She also wrote a number of novels, among them Come to Dust (1941), By Grace of Love (1957), and Desert Calling (1949); poetry included in her Poems, 1921-1931 (1931); travel books such as Holiday in Europe (1963); works on philosophy, including The Age of Faith (1957); and translations of a number of other important works.

OBITUARIES AND OTHER SOURCES:

books

American Women Writers, second edition, St. James Press (Detroit, MI), 2000, pp. 73-74.

periodicals

New York Times, December 28, 2002, p. A36.

Times (London, England), January 24, 2003, p. 40.