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The New House by Lettice Cooper


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Tea with Mr. Rochester


Frances Towers - 1949
    At first glance one might be disposed to dismiss Miss Towers as an imitation Jane Austen, but it would be a mistaken judgment, for her cool detachment and ironic eye are directed more often than not against the sensible breeze that blasts and withers, the forthright candour that kills the soul. Miss Towers flashes and shines now this way, now that, like a darting sunfish.' 'At her best her prose style is a shimmering marvel,' wrote the Independent on Sunday, 'and few writers can so deftly and economically delineate not only the outside but the inside of a character…There's always more going on than you can possibly fathom.' And the Guardian said: 'Her social range may not be wide, but her descriptions are exquisite and her tone poised between the wry and the romantic.' Five of the stories were read on BBC Radio 4.

Mary Olivier, a Life


May Sinclair - 1919
    Mamma, the archetype of all women who rule through weakness and suffering, dominates her Victorian household, idolizing her sons, rejecting the independent love of her only daughter. Mary, in response, both adores and hates her mother.

Miss Ranskill Comes Home


Barbara Bower - 1946
    She lives for three years on a desert island before being rescued by a destroyer in 1943. When she returns to England it seems to her to have gone mad: she cannot buy clothes without 'coupons', and she is considered uncivilised if she walks barefoot or is late for meals.

Chatterton Square


E.H. Young - 1947
     They knew too much.  As free as unmarried women, they were fully armed; this was an unfair advantage, and when it was combined with beauty, an air of well-being, a gaiety which, in a woman over forty had an unsuitable hit of mischief in it, he felt that . . . all manhood was insulted . . . But he knew how to protect himself." Fastidious Mr. Blackett rules his home in Upper Radstowe with a gloomy and niggardly spirit, and his wife Bertha and their three daughters succumb to his dictates unquestioningly -- until the arrival next door of the Fraser family 'with no apparent male chieftain at the head of it'. The delightful, unconventional Rosamund presides over this unruly household with shocking tolerance and good humour, and Herbert Blackett is both fascinated and repelled by his sensuous and 'unprincipled' neighbour. But whilst he struts in the background, allegiances form between Rosamund and Bertha and their children, bringing changes to Chatterton Square which, in the months leading up to the Second World War, are intensified by the certainty that nothing can be taken for granted.

The Doves of Venus


Olivia Manning - 1955
    But Quintin, the seducer of one dove, is also the husband of another. And Petta, his once beautiful wife, is fighting back age as fiercely as Ellie is plunging into it.

The Constant Nymph


Margaret Kennedy - 1924
    The fourteen-year-old Tessa has fallen in love with Lewis Dodd, a gifted composer like her father. Confidently, she awaits maturity, for even his marriage to Tessa's beautiful cousin Florence cannot shatter the loving bond between Lewis and his constant nymph.

The Home-Maker


Dorothy Canfield Fisher - 1924
    Evangeline Knapp is the perfect, compulsive housekeeper, while her husband, Lester, is a poet and a dreamer. Suddenly, through a nearly fatal accident, their roles are reversed: Lester is confined to home in a wheelchair and his wife must work to support the family. The changes that take place between husband and wife and particularly between parents and children are both fascinating and poignant.

Invitation to the Waltz


Rosamond Lehmann - 1932
    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.

At Mrs Lippincote's


Elizabeth Taylor - 1945
    Temporarily, this is home for Julia, who has joined her husband Roddy at the behest of the RAF. Although she can accept the pomposities of service life, Julia's honesty and sense of humor prevent her from taking her role as seriously as her husband, that leader of men, might wish; for Roddy, merely love cannot suffice - he needs homage as well as admiration. And Julia, while she may be a most unsatisfactory officer's wife, is certainly no hypocrite.An Alternate Cover for this edition can be found here.

Red Pottage


Mary Cholmondeley - 1899
    She spent most of her life in England caring for her mother. By age 18 she was convinced she would never marry. She is best remembered for her satirical novel Red Pottage. Red Pottage is the story of adultery and a clergyman who destroys his sister's art. The first plot contained in this novel is that of Rachael West an heiress and her love for a man trapped in an illicit affair who is doomed to die by is own hand. The second plot is about a gifted female writer who is unable to break away and start her own life free of her family.

The Tortoise and the Hare


Elizabeth Jenkins - 1954
    He has everything life could offer -- a gracious riverside house in Berkshire, a beautiful young wife, Imogen, who is devoted to him, and their 11-year-old son, a replica of his father.Their nearest neighbor is Blanche Silcox, a plain, tweed-wearing woman of 50 who rides, shoots, fishes, and drives a Rolls Royce -- in every way the opposite of the domestic, loving Imogen. Their world is conventional country life at its most idyllic: how can its gentle surfaces be disturbed?

The World My Wilderness


Rose Macaulay - 1950
    Confused and unhappy, she discovers the wrecked and flowering wastes around St Paul's, where she finds an echo of the wilderness of Provence and is forced to confront the wilderness within herself.

Family Roundabout


Richmal Crompton - 1948
    We are shown the matriarchs around whom their families spin; but whether they direct their children gently or forcefully, in the end they have to accept them as they are.

Guard Your Daughters


Diana Tutton - 1953
    They have been brought up at quite some distance from the rest of the world. Living with their famous detective writer father, and their fragile mother, they have been one another’s friends – with hardly any experience of people outside their family.

The Squire


Enid Bagnold - 1938
    This is maternity and childbirth twenty years before Sylvia Plath. The eponymous "squire", whose husband is abroad on business, happily awaits the arrival of the Unborn in a country house; sensuous descriptions of her own body, her garden, her greed for food and port wine, and her sharply differentiated children, merge with her thoughts about the new baby, about middle age and pain, about her quarrelling staff, and about the waning of the sexual imperative. The arrival of the midwife, an old and tested friend and a dedicated professional, initiates some extraordinary conversations about babies, gender, vocation and the maternal impulse. The relationship of these two women, as they go through one of the most ordinary yet astonishing rituals of life, is portrayed with a tender affectionate care and a deep respect. This is a very surprising book for its time, for any time."- Margaret Drabble"If a man had a child and he was also a writer we should have heard a lot about it. I wanted The Squire to be exactly as objective as if a man had had a baby."- Enid Bagnold