Rosamond Lehmann

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''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.

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 ''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 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''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.