Editing V. S. Pritchett (section)

==Biography==
Victor Sawdon Pritchett was born in [[Suffolk]], the first of four children of Walter Sawdon Pritchett and Beatrice Helena (''née'' Martin).<ref name="odnb">{{Cite ODNB |doi=10.1093/ref:odnb/65704 |title=Pritchett, Sir Victor Sawdon}}</ref> His father, a London businessman, relocated to [[Ipswich]] to establish a newspaper and stationery shop. The business ran into difficulty and his parents were lodging over a toy shop at 41 St Nicholas Street in Ipswich, where Pritchett was born on 16 December 1900. Beatrice had expected a girl, whom she planned to name after [[Victoria of the United Kingdom|Queen Victoria]]. Pritchett disliked his first name, having been nearly mauled by a dog named Victor in his youth,<ref name="odnb"/> hence he always preferred being [[Style (manner of address)|styled]] by his [[initials]] "VSP", despite formally becoming "Sir Victor Pritchett" after being [[knight]]ed.

[[File:Companion of Honour.jpg|thumb|right|115px|'''Insignia of [[Member of the Order of the Companions of Honour]]''']]
His family moved to Ipswich to be near his mother's sister, who had married money and lived in Warrington Road. Within a year Walter was declared bankrupt, the family moved to [[Woodford, London|Woodford]], Essex, then to [[Derby]] and he began selling women's clothing and accessories as a travelling salesman.  Pritchett was soon sent with his brother Cyril to live with their paternal grandparents in [[Sedbergh]], where the boys attended their first school. Walter's business failures, his casual attitude to credit and his easy deceitfulness{{Efn | Walter Pritchett habitually pretended to be a member of the [[Athenaeum Club, London|Athenaeum Club]] to obtain credit falsely, for example.{{cn|date=November 2023}}}} obliged the family to move frequently. The family was reunited, but life was always precarious. They tended to live in London suburbs with members of Beatrice's family, but returned to Ipswich in 1910 to live for a year near Cauldwell Hall Road, trying to evade Walter's creditors. At this time Pritchett attended St John's School. Subsequently, the family moved to East Dulwich and he attended [[Alleyn's School]], where he first had the urge to be a writer,<ref name="odnb"/> but when his paternal grandparents came to live with them at age 16, he was forced to leave school to work as a clerk and [[Currier|leather buyer]] in Bermondsey. At the same time, his father enlisted to work in Hampshire at an aircraft factory to help the war effort. After the Great War{{sfn | Pte Walter Pritchett at www.livesofthefirstworldwar.org.}}{{Failed verification|date=February 2022}} Walter turned his hand to [[aerospace engineering|aircraft design]], about which he knew nothing, and his later ventures included art needlework, property speculation and faith healing.

The leather work lasted from 1916 until 1920 when Pritchett moved to Paris to work as a shop assistant. In 1923 he started writing for ''[[The Christian Science Monitor]]'', which sent him to Ireland and Spain. From 1926 he wrote reviews for that [[newspaper|paper]] and for the ''[[New Statesman]]'', later being appointed its literary editor.{{Sfn|Fulford|1997}}

Pritchett's first book, ''Marching Spain'' (1928), describes a journey across Spain, and his second book, ''Clare Drummer'' (1929), is about his experiences in Ireland. While there, he met Evelyn Vigors, whom he later married. 

Pritchett published five novels, but he said he did not enjoy writing them. His reputation was established by a collection of short stories, ''The Spanish Virgin and Other Stories'' (1932).

Vigors had an affair in the 1930s, and meanwhile Pritchett fell in love with another woman, Dorothy Rudge Roberts.<ref name="odnb"/> In 1936, he divorced his first wife and married Roberts, with whom he had two children; the marriage survived until Pritchett's death in 1997, although they both had other relationships. Their children include the journalist Oliver Pritchett, whose son is the cartoonist [[Matt Pritchett]] <small>MBE,</small> and daughter is screenwriter [[Georgia Pritchett]].<ref>{{Cite web |last=Brown |first=Helen |date=1 August 2021 |title='He pretended to be a robot, then tried to kill me': growing up with cartoonist Matt |url=https://www.telegraph.co.uk/books/what-to-read/pretended-robot-tried-kill-growing-cartoonist-matt/ |access-date=21 October 2022 |website=The Telegraph}}</ref>

During the [[Second World War]] Pritchett worked for the [[BBC]] and the [[Ministry of Information (United Kingdom)|Ministry of Information]] while continuing to write weekly essays for the ''New Statesman''.  After World War II he wrote extensively and embarked on various positions as a [[university lecturer]] in the United States: [[Princeton University|Princeton]] (1953), the [[University of California]] (1962), [[Columbia University]] and [[Smith College]]. Fluent in French, German and Spanish, he published acclaimed biographies of [[Honoré de Balzac]] (1973), [[Ivan Turgenev]] (1977), and [[Anton Chekhov]] (1988).

Pritchett was appointed a [[Knight Bachelor]] in 1975 for "services to literature" and a [[Member of the Order of the Companions of Honour]] in 1993. His other awards included [[FRSL]] (1958), [[CBE]] (1968), the [[Heinemann Award]] (1969), the [[PEN International|PEN Award]] (1974), the [[W.H. Smith Literary Award]] (1990) and the [[Golden PEN Award]] (1994).<ref>{{cite web | url = http://www.englishpen.org/prizes/golden-pen-award-for-a-lifetimes-distinguished-service-to-literature | title = Golden Pen Award | type = official website | publisher =[[English PEN]] |access-date=3 December 2012}}</ref> He was President of [[PEN International]], the worldwide association of writers and the oldest human rights organisation from 1974 until 1976.

Sir V. S. Pritchett died of a stroke in London on 20 March 1997, aged 96.<ref name="odnb" />