Rosamond Lehmann – författare

ONE OF THE MOST REMARKABLE BRITISH WRITERS OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY''Lehmann legitimised a type of writing that took on deep personal themes'' ENGLISH PEN''Full of her sensibility, her funniness, her own peculiar acumen'' ELIZABETH JANE HOWARD ''Lehmann has always written brilliantly of women in love'' MARGARET DRABBLE Two sisters: Madeleine and Dinah. One husband: Rickie Masters. For many years now, Dinah, exotic and sensual, has conducted a clandestine affair with Rickie. Madeleine, calm and resolute, has accepted that her marriage has been of limited success. Rickie''s sudden death makes widows of both sisters in this highly imaginative novel that explores with extraordinary insight the sublimity, the rivalry and the pain of personal relationships.''She makes a mood, an atmosphere, which is never forgotten . . . The inner voice of women talking to themselves about their love affairs, knowing that it is hopeless, having to go ahead anyway, expecting the end as soon as it begins. That, of course, is what Rosamond Lehmann does best'' SUNDAY TIMES

ONE OF THE MOST REMARKABLE BRITISH WRITERS OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY ''The lyrical, sensuous quality . . . puts her immediately into the front rank of English writers'' THE TIMES''It will consume you . . . transforming your whole inner life for the time it takes to read'' JONATHAN COE''There are qualities in this book that mark it out as quite the most striking first novel of this generation'' SUNDAY TIMES ''Mamma was fast asleep at home, her spirit lapped in unconsciousness. Her dreams would not divine that her daughter had stolen out to meet a lover.And next door also they slept unawares, while one of them broke from the circle and came alone to clasp a stranger . . . ''Judith Earle, over-earnest and inexperienced, has always been a little in love with each of the four cousins who come to stay next door and, on her return from Cambridge, becomes madly in love with one of them - Roddy, the ''sensation-hunter''. Dusty Answer traces with delicate nostalgia childhood friendships and the pangs of thwarted young love. This novel is about Judith''s consuming relationship with the Fyfe family, who each fall in love with Judith, transforming her young womanhood.

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.

ONE OF THE MOST REMARKABLE BRITISH WRITERS OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY ''Lehmann legitimised a type of writing that took on deep personal themes'' ENGLISH PEN''Full of her sensibility, her funniness, her own particular acumen'' ELIZABETH JANE HOWARDIn 1933 we meet Rebecca, heroine of The Ballad and the Source - but in a different world, on many levels. Betrayed by her married lover, Rebecca arrives alone at a small Caribbean island. Here, along with the splendidly eccentric members of the British expatriate colony, she meets the former ace pilot Johnny, crippled now, a misanthropic recluse: for both of them their passionate affair reveals the powerful life force love can be. Here too she encounters voices from the past and the vibrant spirit of Mrs. Jardine - voices which remind Rebecca of the girl she was and the woman she could become. This is a poignant, uplifting novel about the lives we leave behind, our eternal quest for love, and the answers we seek when our faith is shaken.

ONE OF THE MOST REMARKABLE BRITISH WRITERS OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY ''Full of her sensibility, her funniness, her own peculiar acumen'' ELIZABETH JANE HOWARD ''Lehmann legitimised a type of writing that took on deep personal themes'' ENGLISH PEN ''Combines something of the earthiness of Colette with the imaginative insight of Virginia Woolf'' CYRIL CONNOLLY Rosamond Lehmann, one of the most distinguished British writers of this century, published eight acclaimed works of fiction. Her only autobiographical work, The Swan in the Evening, recreated first the child she was and the experiences that made her the woman she became, moving on to tell the story of her beloved daughter Sally and the tragedy of her early death at the age of twenty-four. Then, tentatively and persuasively, Rosamond Lehmann relates the totally unexpected, overwhelming and scrupulously recorded psychic and mystical experiences she underwent following that terrible loss. The meaning of such events, their messages of hope and comfort to others she then, through a letter to her grandaughter, passes to us.

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''I cannot doubt that this is Miss Lehmann''s best and most permanent book'' RAYMOND MORTIMER ''Unconventional in structure, in characterisation and development of story . . . Unforgettable'' NEW YORK HERALD TRIBUNE The tale of the unlikely friendship between and an old woman and a young girl. This is one of Rosamond Lehmann''s finest novels. Ten year old Rebecca is living in the country with her family when Sibyl Jardine, an enigmatic and powerful old woman, returns to her property in the neighbourhood. The two families, once linked in the past, meet again, with the result that Rebecca becomes drawn into the strange complications of the old lady''s life - with her husband, her errant daughter and her grandchildren. Through the spellbound eyes of the young Rebecca we enter into an intricate and scandalous family history and slowly the story of the passionate, stormy life of Mrs. Jardine unfolds.

ONE OF THE MOST REMARKABLE BRITISH WRITERS OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY''She uses words with the enjoyment and mastery with which Renoir used to paint'' REBECCA WEST ''Lehmann legitimised a type of writing that took on deep personal themes'' ENGLISH PEN ''No English writer has told the pains of women in love more truly or more movingly'' MARGHANITA LASKI Grace Fairfax lives with her dull, conventional husband Tom in a grey manufacturing town in the north of England. At thirty-four she finds that her external life of dreary routine fails to match up to her lush, wistful and dreamy internal life. Norah, her energetic and chaotic friend, is equally settled in her own marriage to an irritable university professor. Then Hugh Miller and his sister Claire descend upon the quiet town. On all four, the hypnotic charm of these two visitors exerts an enchanting spell. And after their departure, life - having been violently disrupted - will never be quite the same again . . .

ONE OF THE MOST REMARKABLE BRITISH WRITERS OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY''With brilliant dialogue and intense passages of elation and despair, The Weather in the Streets takes you on the rollercoaster of their relationship'' ESTHER FREUD, SUNDAY TELEGRAPH''Lehmann legitimised a type of writing that took on deep personal themes'' ENGLISH PEN''The first writer to filter her stories through a woman''s feelings & perceptions'' ANITA BROOKNERTaking up where Invitation to the Waltz left off, The Weather in the Streets shows us Olivia Curtis ten years older, a failed marriage behind her, thinner, sadder, and apparently not much wiser. A chance encounter on a train with a man who enchanted her as a teenager leads to a forbidden love affair and a new world of secret meetings, brief phone calls and snatched liaisons in anonymous hotel rooms.Years ahead of its time when first published, this subtle and powerful novel shocked even the most stalwart Lehmann fans with its searing honesty and passionate portrayal of clandestine love.Books included in the VMC 40th anniversary series include: Frost in May by Antonia White; The Collected Stories of Grace Paley; Fire from Heaven by Mary Renault; The Magic Toyshop by Angela Carter; The Weather in the Streets by Rosamond Lehmann; Deep Water by Patricia Highsmith; The Return of the Soldier by Rebecca West; Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston; Heartburn by Nora Ephron; The Dud Avocado by Elaine Dundy; Memento Mori by Muriel Spark; A View of the Harbour by Elizabeth Taylor; and Faces in the Water by Janet Frame.