NEN Gallery

Lyn Newman (1901-1973), an author and journalist, joined Girton College, Cambridge, in 1924, after a first degree at Aberdeen University. Her career as a journalist was stopped in 1934 by her marriage to the mathematician Max Newman, fellow of St John's College. During her life she corresponded with several members of the Bloomsbury Group, a group of artists and intellectuals.

The text reads:

"I didn’t mean to write a journal this term – I’m not sending one home, but as I sat at my window this afternoon listening to the thrushes and robins and larks and a score of little birds I don’t know, feeling the spring in the sunshine and seeing the spring in the soft blowing clouds of the sky, the desire to shout for joy and gratitude was so strong in me that I stretched out, without waiting to cogitate, for my pen and pad. The new life I have been groaning for for so many months now is really coming to me."