Overview

ONE OF THE MOST REMARKABLE BRITISH WRITERS OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY 'The first writer to filter her stories through a woman's feelings and perceptions' ANITA BROOKNER 'Every emotional ripple is beautifully observed: the hideous anticipation' GUARDIAN 'Lehmann has always written brilliantly of women in love, of mothers, of daughters' MARGARET DRABBLE A diary for her innermost thoughts, a china ornament, a ten-shilling note, and a roll of flame-coloured silk for her first evening dress: these are the gifts Olivia Curtis receives for her seventeenth birthday. She anticipates her first dance, the greatest yet most terrifying event of her restricted social life with tremulous uncertainty and excitement. For her pretty, charming elder sister Kate, the dance is certain to be a triumph, but what will it be for shy, awkward Olivia? Exploring the daydreams and miseries attendant upon even the most innocent of social events, Rosamond Lehmann perfectly captures the emotions of a girl standing poised on the threshold of womanhood.

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Reviews

Every emotional ripple is beautifully observed: the hideous anticipation, the agony of the empty dance card, the brief flutters of hope as various men take her for a turn around the dance floor, the many small disappointments that follow and the sudden vivid need to escape from the crowd, to flee, to breathe * Guardian * Lehmann legitimised a type of writing that took on deep personal themes -- English PEN A novelist in the grand tradition, and, more than this, an innovator, the first writer to filter her stories through a woman's feelings and perceptions -- Anita Brookner Lehmann has always written brilliantly of women in love, of mothers, of daughters, of suffering -- Margaret Drabble No English writer has told of the pains of women in love more truly or more movingly than Rosamond Lehmann -- Marghanita Laski

Author Information

Rosamond Lehmann (1901-1990) was born on the day of Queen Victoria's funeral, in Buckinghamshire, England, the second of four children. In 1927, a few years after graduating from the University of Cambridge, she published her first novel, Dusty Answer, to critical acclaim and instantaneous celebrity. Lehmann continued to write and publish between 1930 and 1976, penning works including The Weather in the Streets, The Ballad and the Source, and the short memoir The Swan in the Evening. Lehmann was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in 1982 and remains one of the most distinguished novelists of the twentieth century.

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