English novelist Ivy Compton-Burnett was BOTD in 1884. Born in London to a middle-class family, she studied at Royal Holloway College, and became a teacher. She made her literary reputation with a series of novels, written almost entirely in dialogue, chronicling power struggles among Victorian and Edwardian era families, and featuring unconventionally feisty female characters. Highly regarded by her peers, she won the James Tait Black Prize for her 1955 novel Mother and Son. She lived for over 30 years with historian Margaret Jourdain, in a romantic but apparently sexless relationship (confiding to a friend that they were “essentially a pair of neuters”). After Jourdain’s death, she had a relationship with Vogue editor Madge Garland, living together discreetly for the rest of her life. Created a Dame of the British Empire in 1967, she died in 1969 aged 85. She is mentioned in Alan Bennett’s 2007 novella The Uncommon Reader, in which Queen Elizabeth recalls making her a Dame: “I remember that hair, a roll like a pie-crust that went right round her head.”