{{Short description|English writer (1929–2019)}} {{Use British English|date=February 2019}} {{Use dmy dates|date=February 2019}} {{Infobox writer | name = Gillian Freeman | image = | alt = | caption = | pseudonym = | birth_name = | birth_date = {{Birth date|df=y|1929|12|5}} | birth_place = London, England | death_date = {{Death date and age|df=y|2019|02|23|1929|12|5}} | death_place = London, England | resting_place = | occupation = Writer | citizenship = | education = | alma_mater = University of Reading | period = | genre = | subject = | movement = | notableworks = ''The Leather Boys'' | spouse = Edward Thorpe | partner = | children = Harriet Thorpe (daughter)<br />Matilda Thorpe (daughter) | relatives = | awards = | signature = | signature_alt = | website = | portaldisp = }}
'''Gillian Freeman''' (5 December 1929<ref>''International Who's Who of Authors and Writers 2004'', Routledge, p. 187.</ref> – 23 February 2019) was an English writer. Her first book, ''The Liberty Man'', appeared while she was working as a secretary to the novelist Louis Golding. Her fictional diary, ''Nazi Lady: The Diaries of Elisabeth von Stahlenberg, 1938–48'', was assumed by many to be real.
==Early life== Born in Maida Vale, London<ref name="ODNB">{{cite ODNB |doi=10.1093/odnb/9780198614128.013.90000380869 |title=Freeman, Gillian (1929–2019) |year=2023 |last1=Grove |first1=Valerie |isbn=9780198614128}}</ref> to Jewish parents, Dr Jack Freeman, a dentist who had been a physician, and his wife Freda (née Davids),<ref name="Marriages', 1955">'Marriages', ''The Times'', 13 September 1955.</ref> she attended Francis Holland School in London and Lynton House school in Maidenhead during the Second World War.<ref name="Gillian Freeman obituary">{{Cite news |url=https://www.thetimes.com/article/gillian-freeman-obituary-5gqtmwbk3|title=Gillian Freeman obituary |date=2019-03-16 |work=The Times|access-date=2019-08-02 |language=en |issn=0140-0460}}</ref> She graduated in English and philosophy from the University of Reading in 1951.<ref name=WaPo/> She then taught at a school in the East End and worked as a copywriter and a newspaper reporter.<ref name=WaPo/>
==Career== ''The Liberty Man'' (1955) was Freeman's first book, written while working as a literary secretary to the novelist Louis Golding; it was about a love affair between a schoolteacher and a sailor doomed by the class system.<ref name=WaPo>Harrison Smith, [https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/obituaries/gillian-freeman-whose-novel-leather-boys-was-a-gay-landmark-dies-at-89/2019/03/11/9ee08e52-4407-11e9-aaf8-4512a6fe3439_story.html "Gillian Freeman, whose novel ''Leather Boys'' was a gay landmark, dies at 89"], ''The Washington Post'', 11 March 2019.</ref><ref name=NYT/> Freeman's time with Golding was said to have inspired some of her later works.<ref name="Gillian Freeman obituary"/>
One of her best known books was the novel ''The Leather Boys'' (1961), published under the pseudonym Eliot George, after the novelist George Eliot, a story of a gay relationship between two young working-class men, one of whom is married and a biker,<ref name=NYT/> which was later turned into a film for which she wrote the screenplay, this time under her own name. The novel was commissioned by the publisher Anthony Blond, her literary agent,<ref name=WaPo/> who wanted a story about a "Romeo and Romeo in the South London suburbs".<ref>[https://www.telegraph.co.uk/obituaries/2019/03/04/gillian-freeman-author-whose-flair-detail-shone-historical-novels/ "Gillian Freeman, author whose flair for detail shone through in historical novels and in a 'Romeo and Romeo' love story – obituary"], ''The Telegraph'', 4 March 2019.</ref><ref>Martin Foreman, [http://www.martinforeman.com/pages/mfrvleat.html Review of ''The Leather Boys'' (Gillian Freeman)] (1986), [https://web.archive.org/web/19990202232437/http://www.martinforeman.com/pages/mfrvleat.html archived] at the Wayback Machine on 2 February 1999.</ref> Her non-fiction book ''The Undergrowth of Literature'' (1967), was a pioneering study of pornography.<ref name=WaPo/><ref>Victor E. Neuburg, ''The Popular Press Companion to Popular Literature'', Popular Press, 1983, {{ISBN|0-87972-233-9}}, p. 97.</ref>
''The Alabaster Egg'' (1970) is a tragic romance about a Jewish woman set in Nazi Germany.<ref name=WaPo/> In 1978, on another commission from Blond, she wrote a fictional diary, ''Nazi Lady: The Diaries of Elisabeth von Stahlenberg, 1938–48''. Freeman's authorship was not at first revealed and many readers assumed it was genuine;<ref>Anthony Blond, 'Glory Boys', ''The Sunday Times'', 13 June 2004.</ref> it was included in a 2004 anthology of war diaries.<ref name=WaPo/><ref>Joel Rickett, [https://www.theguardian.com/books/2004/dec/11/featuresreviews.guardianreview29 "The Bookseller "], ''The Guardian'', 11 December 2004.</ref>
In addition to novels, Freeman wrote screenplays including ''That Cold Day in the Park'', a 1969 film directed by Robert Altman, the scenarios for two ballets by Kenneth MacMillan, ''Isadora'' and ''Mayerling'',<ref name=NYT/> and with her husband, ''Ballet Genius'' (1988), portraits of 20 outstanding ballet dancers.<ref name=WaPo/> Her final book{{citation needed|date=February 2019}} was ''But Nobody Lives in Bloomsbury'' (2006), a fictional study of the Bloomsbury Group.<ref>Bethany Layne, "'They Leave out the Person to Whom Things Happened': Re-Reading the Biographical Subject in Sigrid Nunez's ''Mitz: The Marmoset of Bloomsbury'' (1998)", in: ''Bloomsbury Influences: Papers from the Bloomsbury Adaptations Conference, Bath Spa University, 5–6 May 2011'', ed. E.H. Wright, Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars, 2014, {{ISBN|9781443854344}}, pp. 30–45, [https://books.google.com/books?id=Js8xBwAAQBAJ&pg=PA41 p. 41].</ref>
==Private life== Freeman married Edward Thorpe, a novelist and the ballet critic of the ''Evening Standard'', in 1955.<ref name="Marriages', 1955"/> The couple had two daughters, the actresses Harriet Thorpe and Matilda Thorpe.<ref name=WaPo/>
She died in London at the Whittington Hospital<ref name="ODNB"/> on 23 February 2019 from complications of dementia.<ref name=WaPo/><ref name=NYT>Neil Genzlinger, [https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/08/obituaries/gillian-freeman-dead.html "Gillian Freeman, Groundbreaking Novelist on a Gay Theme, Dies at 89"], ''The New York Times'', 8 March 2019.</ref>
==Works== *''The Liberty Man'', 1955 *''Fall of Innocence'', 1956 *''Jack Would be a Gentleman'', 1959 *''The Story of Albert Einstein'', 1960 *''The Leather Boys'', 1961 *''The Campaign'', 1963 *''The Leather Boys'' (screenplay), 1964 *''Only Lovers Left Alive'' (screenplay), 1965 *''The Leader'', 1965 *''The Undergrowth of Literature'', 1967 *''That Cold Day in the Park'' (screenplay), 1969 *''An Evasion of Women'' (short play, alongside pieces by Shena Mackay, Margaret Drabble, and Maureen Duffy), 1969<ref>Irving Wardle, 'Experiment and Expansion', ''The Times'', 1 March 1969.</ref> *''The Alabaster Egg'', 1970 *''I Want What I Want'' (screenplay), 1972 *''The Marriage Machine'', 1975 *''The Schoolgirl Ethic: The Life and Work of Angela Brazil'', 1976 *''Mayerling'' (ballet scenario), 1978<ref>Gillian Freeman, 'The making of Mayerling', ''The Times,'' 8 February 1978.</ref> *''Intimate Letters'' (ballet scenario), 1978<ref>John Percival, 'Sadler's Wells: Intimate Letters', ''The Times'', 11 October 1978.</ref> *''Nazi Lady: The Diaries of Elisabeth von Stahlenberg, 1938–48'', 1979 *''An Easter Egg Hunt'', 1981 *''Isadora'' (ballet scenario), 1981<ref>John Percival, 'Isadora, Covent Garden', ''The Times'', 1 May 1981.</ref> *''Lovechild'', 1984 *''Life Before Man'', 1986 *''Ballet Genius: Twenty Great Dancers of the Twentieth Century'' (with Edward Thorpe), 1988 *''Termination Rock'', 1989 *''His Mistress's Voice'', 2000 *''But Nobody Lives in Bloomsbury'', 2006
==References== {{reflist}}
==External links== *[http://www.archiveshub.ac.uk/cgi-bin/deadsearch.cgi?serverid=VSPOKES-ead-reading&bool=AND&numreq=1&fieldcont1=Papers%20of%20Gillian%20Freeman&form=full&fieldidx1=title_NOTRUNC&noframes=on&format=full Listing of Gillian Freeman archives at Reading University Library]
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Freeman, Gillian}} Category:1929 births Category:2019 deaths Category:Alumni of the University of Reading <!-- Eliot George --> Category:British historical fiction writers Category:20th-century English novelists Category:21st-century English novelists Category:Jewish English writers Category:English non-fiction writers Category:Deaths from dementia in England Category:20th-century pseudonymous writers Category:21st-century pseudonymous writers Category:People educated at Francis Holland School Category:People from Maida Vale Category:Writers from the City of Westminster Category:20th-century English women novelists Category:21st-century English women novelists Category:20th-century pseudonymous women writers Category:21st-century pseudonymous women writers