Frost In May (Virago Modern Classics) - Softcover

Frost in May is the unsurpassed novel of convent school life. This story of a clash between a determined young girl and an authoritarian regime is both perceptive and painfully emotional, convincing in every detail (Hermione Lee Observer)

Evelyn Waugh called [her] one of the very best novelists of the day - a title she still deserves (Carol Shields)

Intense, troubling, semi-miraculous ... IT is not the only school story to be a classic; but I can think of no other that is a work of art (Elizabeth Bowen)

A masterpiece. Beautifully written, it is a calm and factual record of the slow death of the soul (Selina Hastings)

A small masterpiece, the compelling and passionate story of young girls at a repressive religious school, told with such lyricism and elegant economy, such subtle understanding (Tessa Hadley)

Antonia White (1899-1980) was educated at the Convent of the Sacred Heart at Roehampton before going to St Paul's School for Girls and training for the stage at RADA. From 1924 until the Second World War she worked as a journalist. Among numerous volumes of short stories, fiction and autobiography, Antonia White published a celebrated quartet of novels linked by their heroine: Frost in May (1922), The Lost Traveller (1950), The Sugar House (1952) and Beyond the Glass (1954).