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Unnecessary Rankings! British Library Women Writers

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Since it’s International Women’s Day, I thought I’d commemorate the occasion by… ranking books by women! Yes, putting successful women up against each other probably isn’t the MOST #IWD thing, but it’s really a celebration because all these books are brilliant.

Obviously I’ve read (and reread and reread) all the British Library Women Writers series, but I’ve decided to stick to a top 15 – because it wouldn’t be the best advertisement for the series to put something in last place, especially when I think they’re all very good. So if something from the BLWW series is missing from the list, then I still like it, just not as much as these 15 marvellous books. Ranking was VERY hard, since they’re basically all 10/10 reads in my opinion.

I’d love to know your thoughts – from the ones you’ve read, how would you rank them?

15. Mamma (1956) by Diana Tutton
Guard Your Daughters may be Diana Tutton’s masterpiece, but she is on more sombre form with Mamma. It’s a love triangle between a woman, her daughter and her son-in-law – but the least shocking version of that premise. Beautiful, almost elegiac, and very human.

14. Introduction to Sally (1926) by Elizabeth von Arnim
Elizabeth von Arnim is so good at finding relatable humour in absurd situations. Sally is like a Greek goddess come alive, but with a ‘common’ accent and working in a shop – von Arnim takes this idea and turns it into a novel with pathos, as well as a great deal fo humour.

13. The Home (1971) by Penelope Mortimer
A spiritual sequel to Mortimer’s much-loved The Pumpkin Eater, this novel is based on the author’s own separation from her husband and re-establishing her life. It’s strange, funny, poignant and expertly written.

12. Which Way? (1931) by Theodora Benson
This forgotten novel gets a little boost up the charts for its brilliant Sliding Doors premise: Claudia has to choose between three weekend invitations. The next three sections of the novel follow, in turn, the very different lives she’d live depending on which invitation she accepts.

11. Tea Is So Intoxicating (1950) by Mary Essex
Some of the books in the series are beautifully writen works of significant literature. Some are just silly, delightful fun. None comes sillier or more delightful than Mary Essex’s Tea Is So Intoxicating, following a couple in their ill-advised attempts to open a tea garden.

10. One Year’s Time (1942) by Angela Milne
Another one that had truly disappeared, despite Milne’s famous uncle – the novel follows a year in the life of Liza, particularly focusing on her romantic and work lives. It feels so modern and fresh, and it makes the top 10 because of the sparkling dialogue.

9. A Pin To See The Peepshow (1934) by F. Tennyson Jesse
I’d argue A Pin To See The Peepshow is the best book in the series – but, of course, best doesn’t always equate to favourite. It is very closely based on the Thompson/Bywaters murder case, with very evident sympathies for Edith Thompson – who, in FTJ’s hands, is an eloquent, compassionate, creative woman. Incidentally, the afterword is perhaps the one I’m proudest of.

8. Keeping Up Appearances (1928) by Rose Macaulay
Macaulay seems to be best-remembered for The Towers of Trebizond, but I much prefer her in witty, lively 1920s mode. Keeping Up Appearances is about two very different sisters – and a lot about middlebrow vs highbrow culture at the time. A constant delight.

7. Dangerous Ages (1921) by Rose Macaulay
And this novel slightly nudges above the other – perhaps because she covers so many generations of women, in their 20s, 30s, 40s, 60s, and 80s, if memory serves. Very, very funny on things like the free love movement and Freudianism, while also surprisingly poignant on the topics of ageing and trying to return to the workplace after raising children.

6. Strange Journey (1935) by Maud Cairnes
I love a high-concept novel that retains heart and humour – and few do it better than this 1935 body-swap comedy, which is really about class, as a titled lady and a middle-class housewife find they are inadvertently switching places.

5. Tension (1920) by E.M. Delafield
It’s a crime that Delafield is only known for a handful of novels when she wrote so many brilliant books. I think Tension is one of her funniest, as well as having one of the all-time great monsters in Lady Rossiter, who sets out to destroy another woman’s life in the name of morality.

4. Father (1931) by Elizabeth von Arnim
Another well-known author with an unjustly neglected book: Jen is one of the ‘surplus women’, expected to look after her father’s household until he marries a much younger woman and turfs her out. I love Father because of Jen: such a spirited, fun, naive, joyful creation.

3. The Love Child (1927) by Edith Olivier
I wrote quite a lot of DPhil thesis on this novella, so of course I love it: Agatha accidentally conjures up her childhood imaginary best friend, and this miracle turns into something rather darker as a power battle develops. This is a tour de force in quiet form – an extraordinary work of imagination with a lot to say about the perils facing unmarried women in the 1920s.

2. Sally on the Rocks (1915) by Winifred Boggs
Another one that gets so high up for its heroine. Sally is a delight – funny, feisty, going after what she wants. She ends up in a love triangle, fighting for the hand of a man she despises but can offer security. What makes Sally on the Rocks so ahead of its time is that both women in the love triangle are amicable and even friendly: there’s no maligned ‘other woman’ here.

1. O, The Brave Music (1943) by Dorothy Evelyn Smith
My number one BLWW title is also one of my favourite ever novels. We follow Ruan from 7 to the cusp of childhood, finding freedom from a repressive home by exploring the moors and befriending a wise older boy, David. The novel has such heart and, even though many sad things happen, it feels full of hope of possibility.

One Year’s Time by Angela Milne (British Library Women Writers)

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I’m delighted that One Year’s Time by Angela Milne has been out for a month now, and I realise I’ve mentioned it a few times but haven’t ever actually written a review of it. I’ve only seen one or two online so far, so I want to spread word more about this marvellous book.

And, gosh, it so nearly didn’t happen! I may have told this story before, but it bears repeating. It was all lined up a couple of years ago, and I think it was even in the catalogue, but it was proving impossible to track down the family. The British Library are brilliant at finding estates and negotiating publications, so it did feel like a lost cause. With the thought ‘well, it can’t hurt’, rather than any real expectations, I put a plea out here. And it turned out that one of Angela Milne’s nephews had once commented on Claire’s blog, so she got in touch with him – and he was able to connect us with Angela Milne’s children. How wonderful! The blogging world stepped in where every other attempt had failed – and the result is that One Year’s Time is back in print.

This was Angela Milne’s only novel, published in 1942 but set in the 1930s – the exact year isn’t clear, but war is clearly on the horizon. It tells of a year in the life of Liza, particularly her romantic entanglements with a young man called Walter (!), and of her work in an office. It’s rare to get the career angle of a woman’s life in a novel from this period, and I particularly enjoyed that.

As the book opens, Liza is painting the floor – rather unsuccessfully. She surveys her flat, and feels a bit sad about being single.

There was a scrubby patch on the carpet where she had washed the ink out; and two cushions hardly counted as heaping a divan, and chintz curtains weren’t necessarily chintzy, and they weren’t gay, they were just curtains hanging up. She thought, oh, all these things the newspaper say about what they call Bachelor Girls.

‘Bachelor Girls’ is a term that recurs throughout the novel. Liza feels some disdain for women who are unmarried, particularly those who have settled into lifelong friendships with other women (and one does wonder how much she might be missing about lesbians…) But she also stands up to Walter when he mentions the same topic:

“You have to wear a collar and tie and have square legs to be a bachelor girl.”

“It’s awfully unfair that they don’t call men spinster boys. I mean, men who aren’t married. Why do you think they don’t?”

“I suppose they aren’t a new enough invention,” said Walter.

We chart the ups and downs of Liza and Walter’s relationship, and what I most enjoyed about it was the dialogue. It’s very hard to get flirtiness and wit onto the page, but I think Milne does it brilliantly. A lot of what they say is quite stagey, and reminded me of Noel Coward, so it gives the sense of what their relationship is like – rather than being actual conversations that real people would have. And that, to my mind, makes it much more entertaining.

As I wrote in my afterword to the new edition, two themes that dominate One Year’s Time, or at least preoccupy the characters, are sex and money. It is surprisingly frank for a 1942 novel, particularly one probably aimed at a wide audience rather than a small literary elite. Walter casually says that the thing he likes best in the world is sex, and Liza and Walter go speedily from meeting each other to ‘me in bed with nothing on, and him kneeling there with only socks’. They have no qualms about discussing their past sexual history with each other, and Walter even casually mentions having had an affair with a married woman. 

And then there’s money. Liza earns a living and has a small legacy from an uncle, but she is very conscious of not having quite enough to live the lifestyle she’d like. We get the details of her salary, her potential raises, her rent – even how much different food items are in shops, and her silent indignance when a friend spends more than others at a restaurant then splits the bill. Such things are perennial.

So much about this book feels fresh and modern. It’s also, of course, a snapshot of the late 1930s – in a way that helps us remember that human nature doesn’t changed very much, and we all have more or less the same concerns that our parents/grandparents/great-grandparents did. Most of all, I think it’s a very funny book with a memorable pair at the centre who are often frustrating but always compelling. I’m so pleased it’s back in print, and I finally have my own copy.

An update on British Library Women Writers series

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I am so behind with updating you on what’s going on with the British Library Women Writers series! There is good news, bad news, and some more good news.

No more Angela Milne… for now

Let’s start sombrely with the bad news. A while ago I announced that One Year’s Time by Angela Milne would be published this autumn – there was even a lovely cover designed. But sadly the British Library have been unable to trace the family and, because the book is still in copyright, they’ve decided against publishing it for the time being. (Publishers can risk publishing a book if every effort has been made to track down the copyright holders, but the British Library is understandably a bit cautious on this front.) If the family do turn up, then it might still be printed – so if, by any remote chance, you know a relative of Angela Milne – please get them to get in touch with the British Library!

It is a shame, because One Year’s Time is a wonderfully witty, interesting book about a woman’s romantic and work life – an insight into office work in the mid-century that we don’t often see in novels like this. And the dialogue has a beautifully Coward-esque spark. AND I don’t even have a copy myself, it’s so hard to track down. Maybe one day??

War Among Ladies by Eleanor Scott, Simon Thomas | Waterstones

A brilliant novel about schoolteachers

But the GOOD news is that Eleanor Scott’s War Among Ladies (1928) is now published! She is known for her horror stories (that the British Library have also published), but this is a novel set in a school. The girls don’t get much of a look in – it’s really about the teachers. Chief among these are Miss Cullen and Viola Kennedy. The portrait we get of Miss Cullen is not an encouraging one:

Her hideous home-mage dress of brown casement cloth strained across her square, sturdy body and hung in ungainly folds above the thick ankles and flat, broad shoes. It was an odd face, as so many faces when you look into them. The skin, reddened and rough, and slack now from want of exercise and years of unhealthy life, stretched tightly across the high, narrow forehead, where no stray line of hair softened the angularity, and sagged beneath the eyes and long, weak, protruding chin. The mouth, set a little open, smiled perpetually, anxiously. The restless eyes, behind strong spectacles, darted suspicious glances, or stared defiantly; they were uneasy, alarmed, defensive. It was a face that sought, in the fashion of thirty years ago, by strained hair, steel-rimmed glasses and protruded jaw, to appear strong; and it was, in every line, weak, distrustful, afraid.

She is disliked intensely by her colleagues – partly for her timid neediness, but also because she is a terrible teacher, who inspires neither respect nor enthusiasm from her pupils. And in the system of the school (and presumably of other 1920s schools), if you fail one subject, you fail them all. And almost everyone fails Miss Cullen’s French classes. In the novel, we see the school in crisis. But Miss Cullen can’t retire, even though she is only a few years away from retirement age, because in the 1920s this meant forfeiting your pension and all the money you’ve put into it.

As Miss Cullen’s career lurches uncertainly towards an end, Viola Kennedy’s is beginning. She is a bit of an idealist, and trying to work out how she fits into this school – whom to befriend and whom to distrust. And what happens when a small town is swift to judge a newcomer.

War Among Ladies is often quite a sad novel, but it is so masterfully done that it’s somehow still a joy to read. It’s the first title since My Husband Simon and The Tree of Heaven that I haven’t suggested to the British Library – but I’m pleased to say that I think it’s every bit as good as the much-loved novels I’ve recommended. Don’t just take my word for it – here are Lil’s thoughts.

 

Christmas stories coming soon!

And the next bit of good news is that there is a Christmas collection of short stories coming out! I’ll confess that I didn’t have a huge amount to do with selecting these, because it involved a lot of rummaging through old periodicals in the library – and that’s not easy to do when you have a full-time job elsewhere. I’ve suggested one or two (including something from recently-reviewed Excuse It, Please! by Cornelia Otis Skinner) but it’s mostly down to the good people at the British Library.

It’s a real range, from some of the most respected short story writers ever all the way to magazine stories that everyone involved probably thought would disappear. They’re cleverly arranged as a chronology through the Christmas period – from Christmas shopping through to New Year. Plenty to enjoy, and easy to give as a pressie – it’ll be published towards the end of October, I believe!

Stories for Christmas and the Festive Season: British Library Women Writers Anthology: 18: Amazon.co.uk: Simon Thomas (ed.): 9780712354523: Books

British Library Women Writers 14: Strange Journey by Maud Cairnes

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Strange Journey by Maud Cairnes, Simon Thomas | Waterstones

When I originally wrote about Strange Journey by Maud Cairnes in 2020, I ended with ‘Strange Journey is not at all easy to find – but I am certainly mulling it over as British Library choice at some point…’ Thankfully they agreed with me that it should enter the series, and it’s now back in print. I particularly love when there’s the chance to bring back impossible-to-find books – saving people a lot of money and time spent refreshing ebay!

Below is what I wrote originally. When I was writing my afterword to the book, I looked at the class issues in the novel – which are obviously front and centre – but also a little about contemporary cinema, how much a Rolls Royce might cost you, and which circumstances mean you use Lady Elizabeth rather than Lady Forrester (Cairnes assumes her readers will know!)

As has become custom, here’s a video review from Lil too – I love how she reads the whole series!

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The body-swap comedy is one of those tropes that is often talked about as if there were millions of them about, but in truth I can only think of a handful. In the world of literature, I’m down to Vice Verse by F Anstey, Freaky Friday by Mary Rodgers, Turnabout by Thorne Smith, and, if you read it somewhat elastically, Asleep in the Sun by Adolfo Bioy Casares. Do let me know if there are others I’m missing. But I can now add to that number Strange Journey by Maud Cairnes.

If you’ve heard of it, it’ll be because of Brad’s review at the excellent Neglected Books blog, where he wrote about it in June. Brad is up there with Scott of Furrowed Middlebrow for his extraordinary knowledge of books nobody else on the internet has mentioned. And he certainly knows how to wipe the internet clean of the books he mentions – as soon as the reviews are out, the secondhand market is drained. The first copy of Strange Journey I ordered got me a ‘sorry, this book has gone’ reply – the second, thankfully, came to my house. And with such a fab cover!

Given my love of the period (it was published in 1935) and my interest in fantastic novels, I couldn’t wait to get stuck in. When I say ‘fantastic’, I mean elements of fantasy happening in the real world. It had such a vogue in the ’20s and ’30s and so often commented on issues of the day. And in Strange Journey, the issue appears to be class.

Polly is a housewife in a middle-class (leaning towards lower-middle-class) household. Her family certainly aren’t poor, but they don’t have money to spare for luxuries. Even the basics can be a little bit of a struggle, and Polly feels rather run ragged. In 1935, it was still a novelty for some households to deal with only an occasional help, rather than a more regular maid or two. She is looking at from her front gate when she spots a woman in a Rolls Royce, clearly well-to-do.

Suddenly I felt a longing to change places with her, to get into that big, comfortable looking car, lean back in the soft cushions I felt sure that it contained, while the chauffeur made it glide away through the dusk to some pleasant house where there would be efficient servants and tea waiting, with a silver teapot, thin china, and perhaps hot scones, nice deep arm chairs to sit in, and magazines lying on the table.

I’ve quoted the same bit Brad did, but it is the key moment. Polly’s longing to exchange lives with this woman doesn’t happen instantly, but the seed is sown. A few days later, remembering that idle daydream, Polly suddenly feels dizzy – and discovers she is no longer in her own home.

Her dream seems to have come true. She is in a beautiful and enormous country house, with a team of servants and with no labour required of her. One of the first things she notices is her immaculate hands, which clearly have never had to be plunged into a bucket of soapy water.

Novels which use a fantastic device have to deal with the surprise of the protagonist. It’s the main difference between a fantastic novel and magic realism – this bizarre turn of events, and the character’s reactions, must be taken into account. Cairnes handles Polly’s disorientation very well. Her attempts to work out who the people around her are, and how they relate to her. Her frequent faux pas, as she tries to take on the tone of Lady Elizabeth (for such she is). And perhaps chiefly, trying to behave in a convincing manner to her new husband, Gerald (Major Forrester), without betraying her real husband, Tom. As it is, any affection from her seems to baffle Gerald.

Polly doesn’t stay there. Before too long, she is whisked back to her normal life – and it becomes clear that Lady Elizabeth has been there in her guise, telling Scottish folklore stories to Polly’s two children.

One of the less convincing elements of the book, albeit essential for the plot, is that Polly decides not to confide in her husband, or anyone. As the months go by, she keeps finding herself having dizzy spells that land her in Lady Elizabeth’s world. Cairnes has good fun with the humorous side of things, as Polly reveals Lady Elizabeth to be a secret bridge player, or as she gets confused with titles of nobles. At the heart of it is a lovable and empathetic character, making the most of the strange world she has found herself in, throwing in some matchmaking on the side. As the reader, I longed for Polly and Lady Elizabeth to meet… and, thankfully, they eventually do.

I loved Strange Journey. The novel sustains the initial idea wonderfully, and Cairnes is obviously an adept, if fairly light, writer. She appears to have only written one other novel, The Disappearing Duchess, and this costs $300 online…

Brad’s detective work add another fun twist to the tale. Maud Cairnes was a pseudonym – for Lady Maud Kathleen Cairns Plantagenet Hastings Curzon-Herrick (!!), known as Lady Kathleen. Head over to his piece for a bit about her extraordinary milieu; it’s safe to safe she was more familiar with Lady Elizabeth’s world than with Polly’s, so it is to her credit that she makes both equally believable.

Strange Journey is not at all easy to find – but I am certainly mulling it over as British Library choice at some point…

British Library Women Writers 13: A Pin To See The Peepshow by F. Tennyson Jesse

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I think A Pin To See The Peepshow (1934) is probably the British Library Women Writers title that was best-known before being republished. It wasn’t a household name, of course, but a lot of people have come across it for various reasons – the 1980s Virago reprint, a couple of TV adaptations, or the fact that Sarah Waters cited it as helping inspire her novel The Paying Guests.

We were really lucky to get it for the British Library Women Writers series. Or, rather, the people at the British Library who are in charge of such things are very talented – I think it was complicated to sort out the rights (since the copyright holder from the 1980s has since died). But they did it, and this much-sought-after book is once again easy to get hold of!

If you’re new to the novel, it is heavily based on the 1920s Thompson/Bywaters murder case. To quote the opening paragraphs of my afterword…

Like many novels, A Pin to See the Peepshow starts with a disclaimer: ‘Every character in this book is entirely fictitious, and no reference whatever is intended to any living person.’ The note is more disingenuous than such notes usually are, but one part is true: neither of the two main characters on whom the novel is based were any longer ‘living persons’. Edith Thompson and Frederick Bywaters had both been killed by hanging 11 years before the novel was published.

Not all the details of their lives match those of Julia and Leo. Edith had a sister, and her father outlived her, for instance, and Tennyson Jesse slightly closes the age gap between the lovers. But the gist of the case was the same: a husband was murdered by a jealous man in the throes of an adulterous affair – and a jury determined that both halves of the affair were responsible, and should be hanged. The trial was a cause célèbre that everyone was talking about and everyone had an opinion on.

It is clear that Jesse is very sympathetic to Julia/Edith. Julia is an intelligent, articulate woman who suffers from a poor background, unsympathetic family, and unpleasant husband. When she starts an affair with Leo, it feels taboo but also like an escape from the drudgery that she has been unfairly condemned to. When the murder case starts – surprisingly late in the novel, and it would feel like more of a spoiler if the novel weren’t so closely based on fact – we remain on Julia’s side. But Jesse doesn’t paint a simple black and white case. Julia may be ultimately an innocent, but she is a complex, flawed one. She’s very good on class – and the fact that Julia’s precise place in the class pecking order condemned her fate:

If only she had been higher or lower in the world! In the class above hers the idea of divorce would not have shocked, and a private income would even have allowed her and Carr to live together without divorce, and no one would have been unduly outraged. Had their walk in life been the lowest, had they been tramps or part of the floating population of the docks down London River, they could have set up in one room together, and no one thought twice about it.

I think A Pin To See The Peepshow is an astonishing work – it might not be my favourite of the titles in the series, but I think there’s a strong argument that it’s the best.

In writing my afterword, I enjoyed delving into the details of the original case more – seeing which bits Jesse chose to leave out, or amplify. Comparing Julia’s prose and Edith’s actual love letters was particularly illuminating. I found it quite complex to write the afterword while keeping reality and fiction separate, but hopefully it all made sense and it was certainly easy to choose which topic to write about. (Incidentally – the episode of ‘Tea or Books?’ that I’m proudest of is episode 34, where Rachel and I compared Jesse’s book with E.M. Delafield’s novel about the same case, Messalina of the Suburbs.)

I’m always wary of suggesting too many books for the series that have previously been reprinted, and there are three or four that were Virago Modern Classics at some point – so those ones have to really justify their place in this series. A Pin To See The Peepshow inarguably does that. I really hope that, now it is back in print, it stays there.

Others who got Stuck into this Book:

“A Pin to see the Peepshow is a memorable and sometimes chilling work which gets under the skin; and it’s also a brilliantly written and constructed novel, which is compelling reading.” – Karen, Kaggsy’s Bookish Ramblings

“The most remarkable thing about this book though is the sustained insight it offers into a woman’s life and way of thinking, and how convincing the portrait of Julia is.” – Hayley, Desperate Reader

British Library Women Writers 12: Which Way? by Theodora Benson

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Two new British Library Women Writers titles have just been published, and I’m quite behind with keeping up to date with my posts about the previous ones. The new ones will turn up here before too long but, before that, let’s talk about the others!

Which Way? by Theodora Benson is the first book in the series where I didn’t have a copy previously. I read it many years ago in the Bodleian, and re-read it as a photocopy that the kind people at the British Library arranged, but it was impossible to get hold of otherwise. Which makes it feel all the more exciting to have rescued it.

I think I first read it after seeing a publisher’s advert – the premise intrigued me. I still think it’s a brilliant idea. Fans of the film Sliding Doors will recognise the idea – what if a small moment had been different? Something seemingly inconsequential could make a huge change in the way a life pans out.

For Claudia Heseltine in Which Way?, it’s choosing which invitation to accept. We get to know Claudia in the opening section of the novel, and it ends with her walking into a room with two letters and a phone call about to be answered. It’s a scene that is repeated a few times in the book – and each time she accepts a different invitation for the weekend.

There was a fire in the room, very comforting and gay. It threw a lovely sheet of orange on the big armchairs on each side of it….An antique clock marked time in a hushed monotone. Only the fire was alive, consuming its life – for what? Then the door opened and as Claudia came with hurried steps into the fire’s glow, two open letters in her hand, the telephone began ringing. She shut the door and turned up the lights.

What I particularly liked about Which Way? is that, though initially set up as a choice between three men, the different outcomes aren’t really about them. Yes, different paths lead Claudia to marriage or relationships or singleness, but what they really draw out of her are different ways to be a woman in the 1930s. Facets of her personality, occupations (domestic or otherwise), friendship groups, even taste in popular culture – all of these are influenced by the metaphorical door she chooses.

The main reason I wanted Which Way? to be part of the series is the innovation. There is nothing strictly fantastic here – Claudia doesn’t jump between timelines; she isn’t aware of the multiverse she inhabits – but it’s such a clever way to look at how circumstances can bring out latent aspects of a person.

Others who got Stuck into this Book:

“I read this book around two weeks ago, and it’s still hovering heavily in my thoughts. I highly, highly recommend it to anyone interested in women’s fiction or social history.” – Asha, A Cat, A Book, A Cup of Tea

“An excellent plot idea, then, and carried out impressively. But there’s more to enjoy here. It’s hard not to feel a sort of fascinated horror at the complete emptiness of Claudia’s life, or lives.” – Harriet, Shiny New Books

British Library Women Writers 11: The Love Child by Edith Olivier

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When the British Library Women Writers series was first suggested, one of the titles I thought about first was The Love Child (1927) by Edith Olivier. Not only is it one of my favourite novels, – novellas? – it was one of the key texts in my DPhil on middlebrow, fantastic novels. I’ve read it many times, and have pressed it into many people’s hands. I’ve written about it on here more than once. But it wasn’t in print, and I really wanted it to be.

Or… was it in print? While you wouldn’t have been likely to find it in bookshops, there was a print-on-demand version available – along with all the rest of Olivier’s novels. The editions weren’t beautiful, but they were great at making the books available. And yet I really, really wanted it between beautiful British Library covers… luckily I was like the persistent widow of the Bible, and finally the British Library agreed. (It wasn’t quite like that, of course, but I am delighted that The Love Child made it!) It was possible because Olivier died more than 70 years ago, and so the novel is out of copyright.

The Love Child was Olivier’s first novel, written when she was in her 50s – she described the idea as coming to her in the middle of the night, and feverishly writing the beginning in her bed. And that idea is this: what if an imaginary friend became real?

What makes this such a 1920s novel is that the heroine is an unmarried woman who feels herself on the shelf in her 30s – and, with so many men lost at war, she has far fewer options for marriage. While many women have always been happy without marriage and children, Agatha Bodenham is not one of those women. Not having a child is clearly an aching gap in her life.

As the story begins, she is mourning her mother – her final close family connection. Agatha starts thinking about Clarissa, her childhood imaginary friend – whom had been a wonderful (if illusory) companion until a governess poured scorn on her. She remembers the joy of playing with her, and starts to do so again.

Then one day, when Agatha was quietly sitting on the white seat at the end of the green walk, darning a black woollen stocking to wear in church the next day, and for once more absorbed in darning than in dreaming – then, all of a sudden, Clarissa came and sat on the seat beside her. She was smaller even than Agatha had imagined her, and she looked young for her age, which must have been ten or eleven.

Clarissa has materialised! From here, The Love Child looks at the delight of this miracle – but, as time goes on, the problems that come with it. Clarissa is increasingly visible to others, and Agatha has to deal with that. And, as she grows earlier, Clarissa begins to yearn for independence herself…

This is a short masterpiece, far better than anything else Olivier wrote. It’s sophisticated and complete, and I think ranks as one of the most perfect novellas of the 20th century. As it’s so short, this new British Library edition also includes a selection of excerpts from Olivier’s autobiography, Without Knowing Mr Walkley, which I think is a really helpful addition to the book. And, of course, my afterword – which is largely about the introduction of the first adoption law in the UK, referred to in the novel.

If you haven’t read this gem before, I very much recommend it! And don’t miss the different posts about the series appearing across blogs, YouTube and Instagram during the ongoing #FarMoreThanFiction blog tour (of which this is, I suppose, an unofficial entry!)

British Library Women Writers #10: Sally on the Rocks by Winifred Boggs

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It’s less than a year since I first blogged about Sally on the Rocks here (though I read it earlier in 2020, and only blogged after my re-read) – and here we are, it’s the tenth book published in the British Library Women Writers series. I am so excited for people to meet her!

I’m writing about each of the series in turn, and a lot of this post is copied from my original review. Before I repost that, though, a bit of background into its appearance on the list. I think it’s the first BLWW title that I discovered while deliberately hunting out little-known and out of print books – I have actually been going through Scott’s incredible list of British and Irish women writers 1910-1960, hunting out the ones who sound particularly interesting. You have to get through a lot of books to find a real gem, of course, and Sally on the Rocks wasn’t even the Boggs title I intended to read.

The title that made me want to explore Boggs was The Indignant Spinsters, since it sounds so up my street. I did get a copy, but I bought Sally on the Rocks too because there were a few more copies available and rather cheaper. Why not, thought I. Well, now I’ve read both books – and Sally on the Rocks is much, much better. I suggested it to the British Library with a fervent urgency, and they agreed that it should be back in print.

My afterwords for the series are supposed to identify particular issues of the period affecting women, which are brought out in the novel. There wasn’t one clear issue in Sally – except for the different morals facing men and women, which is spelled out so clearly in the novel that all I could really do was echo them. So, alongside, I wrote about money and dug up some really interesting contemporary reviews. As always, I start wondering if I’ll have enough to say, and find that I have to start cutting back.

What was much harder was the bio – it’s impossible to find anything beyond the most rudimentary info. Because she died more than 70 years ago, it’s out of copyright and there weren’t any family members who could clue us in a bit (which proved so useful when writing about Dorothy Evelyn Smith). I’m hoping the book being back in print might bring some info out of the woodwork.

And the book itself – here we go: Winifred Boggs starts us with the sort of village community that has been the basis for many of the great works of literature. Little Crampton is an insular world, assured of its own superiority, and not necessarily very welcoming to outsiders. But how few outsiders would be interested in it, because any village would be equally convinced that it is the first and best village in its region. Little Crampton is ruled over by Miss Maggie Hopkins – an unofficial position, but her gossiping, her rigid adherence to morality when it can shame others, and her determination to root out the truth in any situation mean that she is feared and also a vital source of information.

As the novel opens, she writes to Sally, hinting that the bank manager and sort-of-curate, Mr Bingley, is looking for a wife. ”He’s so safe, and of course there’s the house and ‘perks’, as well as the fifteen hundred,” she writes, none too subtly. It is enough to bring Sally back to the village where she grew up, adopted by the vicar Mr Lovelady, who is still in residence but hears little from his ward. She is in France, wary of the probable coming invasion – for the war is underway – and she has is licking the wounds of an unsuccessful love affair. She comes back to Little Crampton.

As she says, ”You’re not out for romance at thirty-one; it’s a business.” She is truly fond of Mr Lovelady, but she does not want to end up dependent on him – rather, she sets her cap at Mr Bingley and is willing to do whatever it takes to become his wife. All is fair in love and war, perhaps – but there is neither love nor war here. It is a woman who has been broken by the world seeking to play the world’s rules against themselves. She is like a much more likeable Becky Sharp. She doesn’t seek power or position – just stability.

Sally on the Rocks is wonderfully feminist at many junctures. I shan’t spoil all the plot, but Sally’s lover from France comes back. When Sally is asked, by her ex-inamorato, if she can forgive him, she replies:

”There is no question of that, only you are a little illogical, aren’t you? You are to be permitted to forget, but never I. Yet you have paid no price. Your wife forgave you and married you just the same, as women, wise or foolish, do the whole world over. You look at the matter one way and I the other – the man’s and the woman’s way. You ran no real risk of losing your wife by confessing. I lose everything in this world; some think everything in the next. No, such things are not on the same footing, after all.”

Most wonderful is Boggs’ take on a love triangle. Mrs Dalton, a widow with a young daughter, is also keen to persuade Mr Bingley to marry her. We have seen, hundreds of times, the two women pitted against each other for the ‘prize’ of the man. Here, the women candidly agree that Mr Bingley is a repellent prospect but the financially savvy one, acknowledge that they will both fight hard to win his hand, but that they will play fair. There is a sense of comrades-in-arms between them that I haven’t seen in a novel before.

I should say, Sally on the Rocks is very funny, as well as having a lot to say about the status of women at the time. Sometimes simultaneously. My favourite, extended scene was when Sally takes Mr Bingley off on a walk in the woods, deliberately letting them get lost – her plan being that, lost alone with her in the woods, under a full moon, he will feel duty-bound AND romantically inclined to propose.

But much of the humour, as well as the enjoyment in the book, comes from Sally. She is determined, witty, bloody but unbowed. She is even rather ruthless, but there is plenty of humanity in her too – and, of course, there is another man who catches her eye. He is not at all the savvy choice. I shall leave it to your imagination to decide which path she ultimately takes…

I’m so delighted that more people will meet Sally, and am very impatient to hear people’s thoughts. Luckily, the four new British Library Women Writers titles will all be part of a blog tour throughout October and November – I can’t wait!

British Library Women Writers #9: Mamma by Diana Tutton

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Two new British Library Women Writers titles are out YESTERDAY in the UK – Sally on the Rocks by Winifred Boggs and The Love Child by Edith Olivier, which are both up there among my favourites in the series so far. I was going to do one of my posts about them, but realised that I’d never actually done BLWW number 9, Mamma (1956) by Diana Tutton. (You can see my posts on all the series at the blww tag.)

I first read Mamma in the Bodleian, after loving the extraordinary Guard Your Daughters but not being able to track down her other books. Older copies of Mamma do turn up now and then, but obviously this new edition is available to everyone easily!

When I read Mamma, I was a bit taken aback at first. Guard Your Daughters had been an instant favourite – almost from the first page. It was lively and funny and chaotic. Mamma is a much quieter book – it’s about Joanna, whose daughter Libby moves in with her to save money. She brings along her new husband Stephen, whom Joanna doesn’t know. He is much older than Libby – indeed, he is only a few years younger than Joanna. And gradually Steven and Joanna develop feelings for one another…

It sounds very sensational, whenever you try to describe it, but it really isn’t. It is such a gentle, thoughtful, and unsensational book – just looking at what might happen in this situation, between three decent people who don’t want to hurt each other.

When it came to writing my afterword, I ended up writing about sex – I always seem to veer into this for the series, and I’m worried that people will be alarmed. But the levels of discretion writers did or didn’t have about sex does seem to shift so much in the period – in fact, there’s a novel I’m hoping we’ll do next year that is very interesting on the topic, writing much less discreetly than you’d imagine for the era…

In Mamma, it’s all tied up with psychology and changing norms – particularly around celibacy before marriage.

“I don’t see,” said Elizabeth, smiling, “how anyone at all young can live without sex and not get warped.”

Steven’s feelings changed abruptly. Of all the tactless remarks! But Joanna answered peacefully: “Quite a lot do.”

“Well, they all get a bit peculiar.”

“I don’t think that’s altogether true.”

“Janet says it comes out in all sorts of funny little ways.”

“Well, good Lord, we’ve all heard that one,” said Steven impatiently. “But it’s by no means universal.”

“Even if it’s not visible,” calmly continued Elizabeth, “it’s still there. In fact if you can’t see if it’s probably worse.”

“Darling,” said Joanna, looking, as Steven gratefully noticed, not hurt, but amused, “we’ve all heard that, too.”

“Often,” added Steven.

“Oh, all right!” said Elizabeth, not at all offended. “But all the same, Janet says – ”

“A course in so-called psychology,” said Steven nastily, “doesn’t guarantee a profound knowledge of human nature.”

I’ve been interested to see some people preferring this novel to Guard Your Daughters – I still think that’s Tutton’s masterpiece, and one of my all-time favourite novels, but Mamma is such a different type of novel that they don’t really compare. Now we just need to decide if there is an appetite for her third and final novel, about brother/sister incest…

Announcing 4 New British Library Women Writers Novels!

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Sometimes you see news about an exciting book coming out, and then you realise you have a year to wait. Well, not today friends – I’m going to tell you about the four new British Library Women Writers novels, and two of them are coming out this month! And the other two are coming out next month! Basically what I’m saying is, put your preorders in now and you won’t have long before you can be knee-deep in these books. [In the UK, that is… they’re next year in other countries, I think, though of course you can ship them elsewhere.]

Obviously I love all the books in this series, and all but the first two have been titles I’ve suggested for reprinting – including these four – but this batch is particularly special to me. There is one book here that I’m particularly excited to see people discovering. ANYWAY on with the announcement…

Sally on the Rocks by Winifred Boggs

This is the one I’m most thrilled about, I think – because it had disappeared almost completely before this edition, and deserves to be so much more widely known. You might remember I raved about it last year, and it ended up on my favourite books of 2020.

Sally is a delightful heroine, coming back to her childhood village with the prospect of marrying the local bank manager – but gets in a love triangle with a widow. The thing I love is that the women aren’t pitted against each other – they both agree that the bank manager is awful, but want the security that comes with a ring – and play fair to see who’ll win. It’s such a joyful, funny novel, but also one with a lot to say about the situation of women in the 1910s.

Which Way? by Theodora Benson

I had only been able to read this in the Bodleian Library before – it has hitherto been very hard to find, and is a wonderfully innovative novel – especially for its time, the 1930s. The heroine is invited to three different weekends away – and the novel is split into sections looking at what would have happened if she had taken those three different invitations. It’s cleverly and engagingly done.

A Pin To See The Peepshow by F. Tennyson Jesse

I know this novel has long been on people’s wishlists to be reprinted, and I was so happy when the clever people at the British Library managed to secure the rights. It’s a fictionalised version of the Thompson/Bywaters case – but you don’t need me to persuade you it’s brilliant, as coincidentally Lucy Scholes has just written a wonderful piece about it in the Paris Review.

The Love Child by Edith Olivier

If you’ve been reading StuckinaBook for a while, you’ve probably seen me mention this one – it was one of the first titles I suggested to the British Library, and I’m delighted that it’s now on the list. One of my favourite books, it was also one of the central texts for my DPhil – so you can imagine I had a lot to say in the afterword. In the novel, Agatha is a lonely spinster who accidentally conjures her imaginary childhood best friend Clarissa into life. What starts out a joyful bizarrity becomes something darker as a power struggle develops. It’s a super short novel, so we’ve also included excerpts from Olivier’s autobiography in the book.

So glad to tell you all about these now – which appeals the most??