Overview

From the critically acclaimed author Sally Bayley, The Green Lady is a poignant, brilliant exploration of the relationships between children and their teachers. In the style of her memoir Girl with Dove, this book explores a child’s search for artistic education and a sense of self. Lyrical and playful, Sally Bayley’s writing transports the reader into an eccentric world of teachers, guardians and guiding spirits of place. Moved by her female teachers, and guided by the artist J.M.W. Turner, Bayley’s protagonist goes in search of her maternal ancestors, in particular her grandmother, Edna May Turner. Following the narratives of other women in history who have taken different routes to independence and artistic freedom – including the educational suffragist Mary Neal, actress Margaret Rutherford, and poet Stevie Smith – Bayley considers the paths to happiness and the limitations social convention imposes. Part novel, part memoir, The Green Lady continues the traditions of Virginia Woolf’s Orlando as an imagined biography which urgently understands the need for a space of one’s own in which to thrive. As one of the book’s several foster children, Bayley reminds us that families and homes can be found and built within literature and the arts as well as nature's green spaces.

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9780008414221

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Reviews

PRAISE FOR SALLY BAYLEY'S GIRL WITH DOVE 'This is a very eccentric memoir ... I liked it, because I was captivated by Sally Bayley's poetic light touch ... Thanks to the guidance of three beloved fictional characters ... who came alive in her imagination, young Sally negotiated her way through the jungle of her childhood' The Times 'The strangest and most striking memoir I have read in years ... Her bold poetic prose carries the sinister cackle of Bertha Mason on a warm breeze through St Mary Mead, to be wafted away in comic disdain by Betsey Trotwood' Helen Brown, Daily Telegraph 'A testament to innocence, resilience and the protective power of the imagination ...This is a story about the child's need to make sense of chaos and the redemptive power of stories to bestow meaning ... The word mesmerising is frequently applied to memoirs, but seldom as deservedly as in the case of Girl With Dove, a work suffused with psychological depth, literary inventiveness and subtle brilliance' Financial Times 'Bayley's family are compelling, certainly, but it's the formidable and moving lines of much-loved prose, sketched long ago in the classics, that provide much of Girl With Dove's horsepower' Irish Times 'A brilliant evocation of the porousness for children between reality and fiction ...The book is beautifully written ... just let its poetic rhythms lap over you ... it left me longing for more of Bayley's recollections from a place of relative tranquility' Spectator 'This extraordinary book ... an astonishing tale, astonishingly written in clear, precise prose ... Bayley is exceptionally good at bringing us into the child's world ... there's a raw, visceral power to the writing, which turns the abstract physical on almost every page ... the prose sings ... This bold, arresting memoir is about the quest for a different kind of truth' Sunday Times

PRAISE FOR SALLY BAYLEY’S GIRL WITH DOVE ‘This is a very eccentric memoir … I liked it, because I was captivated by Sally Bayley's poetic light touch … Thanks to the guidance of three beloved fictional characters … who came alive in her imagination, young Sally negotiated her way through the jungle of her childhood’ The Times ‘The strangest and most striking memoir I have read in years … Her bold poetic prose carries the sinister cackle of Bertha Mason on a warm breeze through St Mary Mead, to be wafted away in comic disdain by Betsey Trotwood’ Helen Brown, Daily Telegraph ‘A testament to innocence, resilience and the protective power of the imagination …This is a story about the child’s need to make sense of chaos and the redemptive power of stories to bestow meaning … The word “mesmerising” is frequently applied to memoirs, but seldom as deservedly as in the case of Girl With Dove, a work suffused with psychological depth, literary inventiveness and subtle brilliance’ Financial Times ‘Bayley’s family are compelling, certainly, but it’s the formidable and moving lines of much-loved prose, sketched long ago in the classics, that provide much of Girl With Dove’s horsepower’ Irish Times ‘A brilliant evocation of the porousness for children between reality and fiction …The book is beautifully written … just let its poetic rhythms lap over you … it left me longing for more of Bayley's recollections from a place of relative tranquility’ Spectator ‘This extraordinary book … an astonishing tale, astonishingly written in clear, precise prose … Bayley is exceptionally good at bringing us into the child's world … there's a raw, visceral power to the writing, which turns the abstract physical on almost every page … the prose sings … This bold, arresting memoir is about the quest for a different kind of truth’ Sunday Times

Author Information

Sally Bayley is a Teaching and Research Fellow at the Rothermere American Institute at the University of Oxford and from September 2018 she will be teaching writing in Oxford as a Royal Literary Fund Fellow. Sally has written widely on visual responses to literature, including a jointly authored study of Sylvia Plath's relationship to the visual arts: Eye Rhymes: Sylvia Plath's Art of the Visual and a study of Plath as a cultural icon: Representing Sylvia Plath. In 2010 she completed a cross-media study of Emily Dickinson as a way of thinking about America's relationship to space and place: Home on the Horizon: America's Search for Space, from Emily Dickinson to Bob Dylan. She is the author of The Private Life of the Diary (Unbound, 2016).

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