Novelist, born in Ruse (formerly Ruschuk), N Bulgaria. He studied in England and was naturalized in 1922. He made his reputation with Piracy (1922), The Green Hat (1924), and his short story collections, The Romantic Lady (1921) and These Charming People (1923).
Michael Arlen (November 16, 1895 - June 23, 1956), born Dikran Kouyoumdjian, was an Armenian essayist, short story writer, novelist, playwright, and scriptwriter, who had his greatest successes in the 1920s while living and writing in England. Although Arlen is most famous for his satirical romances set in English smart society, he also wrote gothic horror and psychological thrillers, for instance "The Gentleman from America," which was filmed in 1956 as a television episode for Alfred Hitchcock's TV series Alfred Hitchcock Presents.
Very much a 1920s society figure resembling the characters he portrayed in his novels, and a man who might be referred to as a dandy, Arlen invariably impressed everyone with his immaculate manners. Sydney Horler (1888-1954), another popular author of the time, is said to have called Arlen "the only Armenian who never tried to sell me a carpet", while Arlen half-jokingly described himself as "every other inch a gentleman". In 1901, apparently not feeling satisfied with Bulgaria's position in the oncoming war, Arlen's family moved once more: this time to the seaport town of Southport in Lancashire, England.
Adolescence: Becoming a Writer
After attending Malvern College and spending a brief time in Switzerland, Arlen enrolled as a medical student at the University of Edinburgh, despite his and his family's intention to go to Oxford University. If we are to view Arlen's first published book, The London Venture, as being semi-autobiographical, then we will never know why Arlen made this "silly mistake" of going to Edinburgh instead of Oxford.
In The London Venture, Arlen writes: "I, up at Edinburgh, was on the high road to general fecklessness. 132)
In 1913, after a few months of university, Arlen moved to London to live by his pen.
Young Adulthood: The Beginnings
Arlen began his literary career in 1916, writing under his birth name, Dikran Kouyoumdjian, first in a London-based Armenian periodical, Ararat: A Searchlight on Armenia, and soon after for The New Age, A British weekly review of politics, arts, and literature. For these two magazines, Arlen wrote essays, book reviews, personal essays, short stories, and even one short play.
Arlen's last submissions to The New Age, a series of semi-autobiographical personal essays entitled "The London Papers," were assembled in 1920 and published with slight revisions as The London Venture. Already in January and April 1920, Arlen signed two short stories, published in English Review, with Michael Arlen. In 1922, Arlen naturalized as a British citizen and legally changed his birth name, Dikran Kouyoumdjian, to Michael Arlen. (See From Dikran to Michael for further detail on Arlen's name-change.)
In 1920, Arlen also spent some time in France with Nancy Cunard although she was married to someone else at the time—-a relationship which fuelled Aldous Huxley's jealousy.
Fame and Fortune
After "The London Venture", Arlen worked on romances, spicing them with elements of psychological thriller and horror, including The Romantic Lady, These Charming People, and "Piracy": A Romantic Chronicle of These Days. In These Charming People, for instance, Arlen wrote tales which included elements of fantasy and horror, in particular "The Ancient Sin" and "The Loquacious Lady of Lansdowne Passage".
The above works eventually culminated into the book that would launch Arlen's fame and fortune in the 1920s: The Green Hat, published in 1924.
After the publication of The Green Hat, Arlen became almost instantly famous, rich, and like celebrities today, incessantly in the spotlights and tabloids. During this period of his fame, the mid-1920s, Arlen frequently travelled to the United States and worked on plays and films, including "Dear Father" and These Charming People.
Naturally, after all this fame and attention, Arlen felt somewhat anxious to write the book that would follow The Green Hat. Notwithstanding, Arlen wrote Young Men in Love (1927) and received mixed reviews.
After Young Men in Love, Arlen continued with Lily Christine (1928), Babes in the Wood (1929), and Men Dislike Women (1931), none of which received the enthusiastic reviews that The Green Hat had received.
Adulthood: Off to America
In 1927, Arlen, feeling ill, joined D.
In 1928, Arlen married Countess Atalanta Mercati in Cannes, France, where he had moved to and where he had two children, respectively a son, Michael John Arlen born in 1930, and a daughter, Venetia Arlen, born in 1933.
With his following novel, Man's Mortality (1933), Arlen turned to political writing and science fiction, brushing aside his earlier, smart society romances.
In the following years, Arlen also returned to gothic horror with Hell! In his final collection of short stories, The Crooked Coronet (1939), Arlen briefly returns to his earlier romantic, but also comic, style. Arlen's claim to fame in the world of crime fiction rests on one short story, "Gay Falcon" (1940), in which he introduced gentleman sleuth Gay Stanhope Falcon. Farewell, My Lovely.)
In 1939, in the midst of World War II, Arlen returned to England to serve England in World War II. While his wife, Atalanta, joined the Red Cross, Arlen wrote columns for The Tatler.
In 1940, Arlen was appointed Civil Defense Public Relations Officer for the East Midlands, but when his loyalty to England was questioned in the House of Commons in 1941, Arlen resigned and moved to America, where he settled in New York in 1946. Said the Duchess (Heinemann, 1934) The Flying Dutchman (Heinemann, 1939)
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