Henrietta Garnett

Henrietta Catherine Garnett (15 May 19454 September 2019) was an English writer. Early life and family Garnett was the second of the four daughters of David and Angelica Garnett. Her father was a writer. Her mother, the daughter of Vanessa Bell and the painter Duncan Grant, and a niece of the writer Virginia Woolf, was an artist. The four sisters had an unconventional childhood. Growing up at Hilton Hall, near St Ives in Huntingdonshire, Henrietta and her sisters Amaryllis, Nerissa, and Fanny were all sent to the co-educational Huntingdon Grammar School. They took leading parts in school plays and were creative. At home, they had a farm, with cows, an orchard, a swimming pool, and sculptures. Garnett also spent holidays at her grandparents' Charleston Farmhouse, sometimes sitting for its painters. She later wrote of Charleston "It was an extraordinary treasure chest overflowing with familiar curiosities, beauty, ideas, people and jokes." Garnett later claimed that after the age of ten she had always been in love. She wanted to become an actress and blamed her failure to do so on a lack of formal education and mental discipline.