Rose Macaulay - Hardcover

'This biography, which I very much enjoyed, is best read as a crisply illuminating overview It is not just for committed fans I met a writer and critic last week who has not read any [books by Rose Macaulay] and yet was still "utterly gripped" by an advance copy of this book' - SUNDAY TELEGRAPH 'LeFanu makes a good case for a re-evaluation of Macaulay as a writer as well as presenting us with some important new material' - LITERARY REVIEW 'This biography intrigues both as an example of the growing feminising of history, and as a record of a woman's life on the cusp between tradition and freedom' - FINANCIAL TIMES 'Sarah LeFanu uncovers the life in an admirably calm and orderly fashion' - THE SPECTATOR LeFanu makes a convincing case Telegraph Provides a revealing extra dimension to this unusually well hidden life Literary lives An intelligent analysis The Spectator Lively new biography. . .An embodiment of 21st century, soft focus, optimistic new feminism, excellent' FT Magazine

In a writing career that covered the first 50 years of the 20th century, Rose Macaulay produced 23 novels, six books of criticism, four books of travel and history and two collections of poetry, as well as a huge correspondence with her friends - figures such as Elizabeth Bowen, Virginia Woolf, E.M. Forster and T.S. Eliot. She gave the impression of being sexually uninterested in men (she looked like a eunuch, said Virginia Woolf who did not take kindly to the fact that Rose's books were more popular than hers), while for a quarter of a century she was madly, passionately and sinfully in love with a married man. The relationship ended only with his death in 1942. A great comic writer who excelled at satire, she was also an innovator and experimenter, and a sharp and invigorating commentator on matters of popular and public interest. This biography explores her life and work.