Overview

Diana Athill is one of our great women of letters. The renowned editor of V. S. Naipaul, Jean Rhys, and many others, she is also a celebrated memoirist whose Somewhere Towards the End was a New York Times bestseller and a National Book Critics Circle Award winner. For thirty years, Athill corresponded with the American poet Edward Field, freely sharing jokes, pleasures, and pains with her old friend. Letters to a Friend is an epistolary memoir that describes a warm, decades-long friendship. Written with intimacy and spontaneity, candor and grace, it is perhaps more revealing than any of her celebrated books. Edited, selected, and introduced by Athill, and annotated with her own delightful notes, this collection—rich with Athill’s characteristic wit, humor, elegance, and honesty—reveals a sharply intelligent woman with a keen eye for the absurd, a brilliant turn of phrase, and a wicked sense of humor. Covering her career as an editor, the adventure of her retirement, her immersion in her own writing, and her reactions to becoming unexpectedly famous in her old age—including gossip about legendary authors and mutual friends, sharp pen-portraits, and uninhibited accounts of her relationships—Letters to a Friend describes a flourishing friendship and offers a portrait of a woman growing older without ever losing her zest for life.

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Many writers can be admired for their lyricism, their powers of imagination and their incisive wit. But there's only one I can think of who inspires a way to live life: Diana Athill. -- Elizabeth Taylor - Chicago Tribune [T]renchant and engaging . . . often hilarious. -- Bill Eichenberger - Cleveland Plain Dealer Diana Athill is perhaps best known for her memoir Somewhere Towards the End, but Letters to a Friend could eclipse it. ... Each letter is an unalloyed delight; articulate to the point of eloquence, and candid, even about the naughty bits. . . . [E]very letter in Letters to a Friend is a small masterpiece; chatty, companionable and very, very intelligent. -- Valerie Ryan - Shelf Awareness

Diana Athill is perhaps best known for her memoir Somewhere Towards the End, but Letters to a Friend could eclipse it. ... Each letter is an unalloyed delight; articulate to the point of eloquence, and candid, even about the naughty bits. . . . [E]very letter in Letters to a Friend is a small masterpiece; chatty, companionable and very, very intelligent. --Valerie Ryan

Many writers can be admired for their lyricism, their powers of imagination and their incisive wit. But there's only one I can think of who inspires a way to live life: Diana Athill. -- Elizabeth Taylor - Chicago Tribune [T]renchant and engaging ... often hilarious. -- Bill Eichenberger - Cleveland Plain Dealer Diana Athill is perhaps best known for her memoir Somewhere Towards the End, but Letters to a Friend could eclipse it. ... Each letter is an unalloyed delight; articulate to the point of eloquence, and candid, even about the naughty bits... [E]very letter in Letters to a Friend is a small masterpiece; chatty, companionable and very, very intelligent. -- Valerie Ryan - Shelf Awareness

Author Information

After a distinguished career as a book editor, Diana Athill (1917—2019) won the National Book Critics Circle and Costa Biography Awards for her New York Times best-selling memoir Somewhere Towards the End. In January 2009, she was presented with an Order of the British Empire.

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