Series: British Library Women Writers

'You don't mean you're going to divorce him?' Miss Spanner said with horror. A sophisticated, emotive novel, Chatterton Square explores the complex web of relationships between two neighbouring families, the Blacketts and the Frasers. Against the backdrop of the advancing Second World War, the novel intricately examines the subtle mechanics of marriage and love through the lens of three marital...

Far below, through the moonlit wood, the lake was visible again and the island in it. Dim, like a phantom ship, it lay in the silver waters and from the nearer end of it shone a narrow rectangle of light... so dull and red and smoky looking that it seemed sinister in the bodiless and blanched moonshine. A novel rich...

When her bohemian life in Paris falls flat at the beginning of the First World War, Sally Lunton returns to the care of her guardian in Little Crampton to find a husband. With some encouragement from the local busybody, she makes a play for Mr Bingley, the bank manager, although she has a rival in Mrs Dalton, a widow with...

Join a host of female writers in celebrating the sunshine months of the year. As a sister volume to Stories for Winter, this collection of 15 short stories takes its inspiration from the holiday season. Grab a copy as you head off to the beach or to lie by the pool and spend time with female protagonists as they navigate...

Stories for Winter is a collection of short stories that take their inspiration from this cold, snowy season, whether it's winter holidays, weather-related predicaments, or seasonal celebrations. In keeping with the spirit of the Women Writers series, the stories are penned by authors whose writing originally appeared in books and magazines in the twentieth century. Launched in 2020, the British...

In this body swap comedy from the 1930s, the minds of two strangers, aristocrat Lady Elizabeth and middle-class Polly Wilkinson, switch places with baffling and hilarious results. With wry observations on class, behaviour, and relationships, both attempt to navigate the different social settings and awkward situations they suddenly find themselves thrust into. The switches take place randomly with very little...

I shall turn this into a tea-house, with lunches if requested, and shall serve pleasant meals in the orchard," announced David, "and with my penchant for cooking I ought to make a fortune." "Oh dear!" said Germayne. David Tompkins thinks it is a splendid idea to open a tea garden at his Kentish cottage. His wife, Germayne, is not so...

'The chamomile, the more it is trodden on, the faster it grows.' Shakespeare, Henry IV Part 1 The opening quote of The Camomile provides an insight into the book's title. The narrative highlights the tensions for a woman in the early twentieth century between the desire to explore her creativity and the duties expected of her as a prospective wife....

The Tree of Heaven follows the fortunes of the Harrison family as the children grow up in the shadow of the First World War. Dorothy's brothers go off, one by one, to the trenches, while she becomes involved with the suffrage movement and later joins a version of the Women's Social and Political Union. Published at a time when women...

The British Library Women Writers series is a curated collection of novels by female authors who enjoyed broad, popular appeal in their day. In a century during which the role of women in society changed radically, their fictional heroines highlight women's experience of life inside and outside the home through the decades in these rich, insightful and evocative stories. The...

She knew now, with a sense of deep tranquil certainty, that terror and injury could not spring from love of this kind, no matter what Nurse said. But she could not put all this into words. Set over the course of a summer, The Spring Begins follows the autonomous awakenings of three women at various stages of life and at...

And now, in this low and critical moment, something in Penelope, something which had understood courage and resource and action, though she herself had never been brave or resourceful or active, stirred and shook itself. Penelope Shadow is quite hopeless at female pursuits, such as housework, looking after children or darning a sock. One day, she buys a typewriter and...

She didn't want men to be in love with her. She wanted power and a dangerous gamble and the fun of winning and putting herself over as a sweet saviour, till at last she came to believe it herself.Lorna Blake is a woman able to create her own reality: a swindler with nerves of steel, gifted manipulator and devoted single...

Skill, subtlety and stylistic assurance ... her moral comedy illumines life. Daily Telegraph Harriet Cooper bumps up a rutted lane in a Hillman crammed with everything she owns. She has come to claim her inheritance—a large green bus—left to her by her aunt, and moves in with two cats to live a frugal life, much to the chagrin of her...

"I know that things of that kind always are known, and the people I've been thrown with, sooner or later, always turned out to have heard the story. Or if they hadn't," said Miss Marchrose in a voice of calm despair, "someone took the trouble to tell them." Miss Marchrose is about to discover that she cannot escape her past...

... marvellous skill a writer who can knock spots off most of her contemporaries. The Guardian A tragi-comedy published in 1971 that looks at the experience of a woman escaping a broken marriage and trying to make a new home for grown-up children who no longer need her. Dealing with themes of abandonment, loneliness, liberation, and love, Eleanor's emotional journey...

She had saved her. But at what a cost! Her position, her name, her character – she had given them all, but Clarissa was hers. Upon the death of her mother, Agatha Bodenham finds herself alone for the first time in her life. Solitary and socially awkward by nature, she starts to dream about her imaginary childhood friend – the...

War Among Ladies by Eleanor Scott presents the story of Miss Cullen, a teacher facing a dreadful predicament. With just four years until retirement, she finds herself unable to meet the educational standards expected at Besley High School for girls, nor can she control her pupils. Aware that no other school would hire her due to her shortcomings, Miss Cullen...

There was no one in the room. Blinds and curtains were closed; the light of the skies, if any, was shut out. ... Only the fire was alive, consuming its life—for what? Then the door opened and as Claudia came with hurried steps into the fire's glow, two open letters in her hand, the telephone began ringing. She shut the...

An older couple remove all the mirrors from their lake house to lose sense of time; two girls are cast as Romeo and Juliet in their college play; a woman bargains with God to let the man she loves telephone her.Women writers of the twentieth century had a complex relationship with romantic fiction, at once a denigrated genre yet also...

'There came a moment, she imagined, in the lives of most unmarried daughters, and perhaps in other people's too, when they must either bolt or go permanently under.' Since her mother's death, Jennifer has devoted years of her life to her father, managing the family home and acting as his secretary. After the sudden announcement that he has taken a...

A Pygmalion-style story told with von Arnim's characteristic wit and charm, this novel introduces us to Salvatia (known as Sally), a much longed-for child to humble shopkeepers. Sally grows up to be an extremely beautiful girl, attracting the attentions of every man who sees her. When her mother dies, her father decides it is just too difficult to defend her...

Oh God, one should not go to parties, Daisy sighed, sinking in wan defeat in the melancholy dawn. One should not mingle with others; one should keep oneself to oneself... Lying awake after a hotel party on holiday in the Mediterranean, Daisy Simpson reflects on her lacklustre social performance and muses on the impression her confident and graceful half-sister Daphne...

'Joanna sat with her cheek against her [Libby's] shining hair. She had hardly thought of Steven since he slammed his way out of the house, but now, welling up within her and pouring out over her love for Libby, came an intolerable flood of envy.' Widowed at 21 with a young baby, Joanna Malling finds her solitary existence upended twenty...

My Husband Simon tells the story of the married life of Nevis Falconer, a young woman novelist, and Simon Quinn. Temperamentally unsuited, they are only kept together by a mutual physical attraction, in spite of innumerable quarrels. They live this superficial existence for three years, until one day Nevis meets Marcus Chard, her American publisher, who has just arrived in...

She got up, without meeting his eyes, and went into the bedroom to dress. That was life all over; you wanted to make a good exit, and you remembered you were still in your housecoat. Single girl Liza leaps into an exciting new sexual relationship with Walter after the couple meet at a New Year's party. Written by Angela Milne,...

Sometimes I think that was the happiest day of my life, those hours of heat and silence and colour, along with David high up on the moor. But then I remember that I have said that of many other days, so I cannot be sure. A female narrator looks back on her childhood in a coming-of-age novel set before the...

A Pin to See the Peepshow by F. Tennyson Jesse tells the story of Julia Almond, a woman who believes she is special and dreams of a more exciting and glamorous life, far removed from the drab suburbia of her upbringing. Her work at a fashionable boutique in the West End grants her the personal freedom she craves, but her...

May I ask your daughter's age? Nan is thirty-three. A dangerous age. Dangerous Ages by Rose Macaulay takes a lively and perceptive look at three generations of women within the same family and the 'dangers' faced at each of those stages in life. The book opens with Neville celebrating her 43rd birthday and contemplating middle age now that her children...