Lady Ottoline Morrell

Lady Ottoline Morrell (born June 16, 1873, London—died April 21, 1938, Tunbridge Wells, Kent, Eng.) was a hostess and patron of the arts who brought together some of the most important writers and artists of her day. A woman of marked individuality and discernment, she was often the first to recognize a talent and assist its possessor—although not a few such relationships ended in quarrels.

The daughter of a general, she broke with her conventionally upper class background as she formed her circle of artists and intellectuals, which included, among others, D.H. Lawrence, Virginia Woolf, Aldous Huxley, Bertrand Russell, and Augustus John. She and her husband, Philip Edward Morrell, Liberal member of Parliament, lived in London from 1902 until 1913, when they settled at Garsington Manor, Oxfordshire. Their home became a refuge for conscientious objectors during World War I, since the Morrells were pacifists. They lived in the Bloomsbury district of London from 1924. A collection of her writings, Ottoline, was edited by R. Gathorne-Hardy in 1963, as was Ottoline at Garsington: Memoirs 1915–18 (1974).