Margaret Kennedy was born in London in 1896 and read History at Somerville College, Oxford in 1915 (alongside Winifred Holtby and Vera Brittain) where she began writing. In 1924, Kennedy’s second novel The Constant Nymph became a worldwide bestseller which she adapted into a hit West End play starring Noel Coward (three different star-studded film versions followed). Described as ‘superb’ by Elizabeth Bowen, Kennedy wrote fifteen further prize-winning novels including The Feast in 1950, as well as literary criticism and a biography of Jane Austen. She died in 1967.

"Splendid" Spectator "It's a novel about ideas...as well as the sort of delicious and merciless emotions that can make people exuberant or desperate" The Atlantic "She is not only a romantic but an anarchist, and she knows the ways of men and women very well indeed" -- Anita Brookner "Margaret Kennedy caught just the taste of the time, mixing a stolid domestic Englishness with 'Continental' bohemians" Irish Times "Miss Kennedy ... finds herself well to the front among novelists, men or women, of today. Its theme is the clash between two incompatible worlds, and its solution is reached through tragedy" New York Times (1924)