This study of contemporary and later critical responses to the work of the novelist Rosamond Lehmann (1901-1990) offers an original approach to twentieth-century literary history by foregrounding the cultural and commercial fields in which Lehmann's writing was situated. Wendy Pollard examines the effect recent developments in literary theory and movements from modernism to feminism have had on Lehmann's literary reception. She also considers the interpolation of a damning third category between te and popular culture, namely middlebrow; a widening gender divide in readership; controversies within book reviewing; changes in the publishing world; and the introduction of popularist means of book marketing. While considering the general privileging of male authors from the 1920s to the 1950s, Lehmann's most prolific period, Pollard argues that her novels have been unfairly subjected to specific forms of neglect, and their exclusion from many academic comparative studies is due to a diversity of form and content that can also be considered their strength.

This is Judith Earle's story - her solitary childhood, her awkward experiences at Cambridge rounded with passion and disillusionment, and her travels abroad with her socialite mother. Above all, this novel is about her consuming relationship with the Fyfe family, who each fall in love with her.

In 1930s England, an encounter on a train leads to an illicit affair, in this novel of “spare, poetic prose” by the author of Invitation to the Waltz (Joyce Carol Oates). Just ten years ago, Olivia Curtis attended her first dance. Now she is divorced and living with her cousin in London. When she gets a call notifying her that her father is gravely ill, she makes preparations to return to Tulverton, in the English countryside—and on the railway journey home, she runs into Rollo Spencer, her girlhood crush. He and Olivia once shared a fleeting, magical moment on a moonlit terrace that she has never forgotten. Now, fate has thrown them together again, and in spite of the fact that Rollo is married, they embark on a clandestine affair. The Weather in the Streets charts the tempestuous course of Olivia and Rollo’s forbidden relationship, from the first throes of passion through the toll of their deception on Olivia as she confronts the harsh reality of being the other woman. A novel ahead of its time that touched on a variety of taboo subjects, it is an enduring classic by an author who “has always written brilliantly of women in love” (Margaret Drabble).

Two sisters fall for the same man in this New York Times–bestselling novel of WWII-era England by an “immensely readable” author (Elizabeth Jane Howard). Rickie Masters is married to Madeleine, who is sitting out the war in the country with their children. Their domestic serenity is shattered when Rickie falls in love with Madeleine’s sister, Dinah, and they begin a clandestine, guilt-ridden affair. When Madeleine discovers their infidelity, accusations are hurled and hard choices are made. Then, a year before the war officially ends, tragedy strikes, and it is only after an estrangement of fifteen years that Madeleine and Dinah will begin to struggle toward some kind of reconciliation. Shifting between the three characters’ viewpoints, and shuttling seamlessly between past and present, The Echoing Grove is a story of life: messy, unpredictable, and unstoppable. It is about family, the things that hold us accountable, the events that lead to life-altering decisions, and the emotions that make us human. And above all it is about love: romantic love, married love, familial love, and illicit love. The heart wants what it wants, regardless of the cost.

Hailing from a renowned literary family, the writer Alec Waugh caused a scandal with the publication of his autobiographical novel/memoir, The Loom of Youth. The book treats the subject of homosexual relationships among British schoolboys with a degree of frankness that was unprecedented at the time, and due to its risque nature and keen insights, it went on to be a runaway bestseller.

ONE OF THE MOST REMARKABLE BRITISH WRITERS OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY 'Full of her sensibility, her funniness, her own peculiar acumen' ELIZABETH JANE HOWARD 'Lehmann legitimised a type of writing that took on deep personal themes' ENGLISH PEN 'Combines something of the earthiness of Colette with the imaginative insight of Virginia Woolf' CYRIL CONNOLLY Rosamond Lehmann, one of the most distinguished British writers of this century, published eight acclaimed works of fiction. Her only autobiographical work, The Swan in the Evening, recreated first the child she was and the experiences that made her the woman she became, moving on to tell the story of her beloved daughter Sally and the tragedy of her early death at the age of twenty-four. Then, tentatively and persuasively, Rosamond Lehmann relates the totally unexpected, overwhelming and scrupulously recorded psychic and mystical experiences she underwent following that terrible loss. The meaning of such events, their messages of hope and comfort to others she then, through a letter to her grandaughter, passes to us.

Fourteen months of Hornby's warm, incisive, and hilarious chronicles of the books he buys and the books he reads.In this latest collection of essays following 'The Polysyllabic Spree,' critic and author Nick Hornby continues the feverish survey of his swollen bookshelves, offering a funny, intelligent, and unblinkered account of the stuff he's been reading. Ranging from the middlebrow to the highbrow (with unrepenting dips into the lowbrow), Hornby's dispatches from his nightstand table serve as useful guides to contemporary letters, with revelations on contemporary culture, the intellectual scene, and English football, in equal measure.

Speaking with the Angel is a collection of short stories, edited by Nick Hornby Hear the Prime Minister explain to the House why he did a runner from Greenford Park service station and hitched a lift with a fifteen-year-old girl, as imagined by Robert Harris. Listen to someone who has a small hostile creature in his room, as told by Roddy Doyle. Twelve voices, twelve completely new stories, narrated by twelve different characters. And all written by twelve of the most exciting and popular writers around: Robert Harris, Melissa Bank, Giles Smith, Patrick Marber, Colin Frith, Zadie Smith, Dave Eggers, Helen Fielding, Roddy Doyle, Irvine Welsh, John O'Farrell and Nick Hornby himself. This sparkling collection has been put together by bestselling novelist Nick Hornby, who also contributes an Introduction about TreeHouse, an organisation that offers a unique and pioneering approach to the education of children with autism. £1 will go to TreeHouse with every copy sold of Speaking with the Angel.

Located in a world wrestling with new concepts of what it means to be modern, this book forms a penetrating analysis of a mid-twentieth century English woman novelist, whose genius was compared to Tolstoy. Rosamond Lehmann's first book, Dusty Answer (1927), with its scandalous subject matter, made her a literary celebrity at the age of twenty-seven. Seen as the voice of a new generation, she became the centre of an artistic circle that included W.H. Auden, Stephen Spender and Elizabeth Bowen. Lehmann's novels deal with the urgency of romance and the vicissitudes of young women in love, and depict the emotional rollercoaster of romance and the tortuous process of growing up more directly than any writer before her. This book locates Lehmann's fictional achievement in the context of her times and in particular describes its positioning within the turbulent period between two world wars and the changing aesthetic of modernity. It includes a penetrating critical analysis of each of the major works, drawing on previously unpublished private papers, including letters to family and friends. In this it provides fresh and original insights into one of the most celebrated English novelists of her age.

In this entertaining and enlightening collection David Lodge considers the art of fiction under a wide range of headings, drawing on writers as diverse as Henry James, Martin Amis, Jane Austen and James Joyce. Looking at ideas such as the Intrusive Author, Suspense, the Epistolary Novel, Magic Realism and Symbolism, and illustrating each topic with a passage taken from a classic or modern novel, David Lodge makes the richness and variety of British and American fiction accessible to the general reader. He provides essential reading for students, aspiring writers and anyone who wants to understand how fiction works.