Eda Lord


Eda Lord was an American writer and longtime companion of Sybille Bedford.

Early life

Eda Lord was born in Illinois on July 30, 1907. She is the granddaughter of Eda Isadore Hurd and George Sterling Lord. Her aunt is visual artist Eda Lord Dixon. The novel "Childsplay" is an semi-autobiographical novel recounting in part Lord's life as a child living with her grandmother in Evanston, Illinois.
She attended Stanford University.

Career

Eda Lord is the author of Childsplay, A Matter of Choosing, and Extenuating Circumstances. She also wrote short stories published in the Paris Review and Harper's Bazaar.
From 1975 to 1976, she was District 12 Chairman of the Inner Wheel Club.

Personal life

Lord moved to France before World War II and was taken prisoner by the Germans for a short period as a citizen of an enemy country.
Lord, openly lesbian, was the longtime companion of Sybille Bedford, with whom she had a 20 years long relationship. According to Quicksands, Bedford's biography, Lord was an alcoholic.
In her book An Alphabet for Gourmets, Mary Frances Kennedy Fisher admitted to have had an early schoolgirl crush on Eda Lord.
She was friends with Barbara Perkins Gamow and some of her letters to Gamow are preserved in the George Gamow and Barbara Gamow Papers at the Library of Congress.
She died in London of cancer, on October 22, 1976.