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Current Virago Authors Discuss their favourite Virago Classic Author
The 2011 Mslexia Writer's Diary, produced in conjunction with Virago Press, contains a series of monthly inspirations from current Virago authors who each discuss a Virago Modern Classic Author – and how that particular author inspires them. To read what the authors have to say, purchase the diary (UK: £12.99 each, £24 for 2; EUROPE: £14.99 each, £26 for 2; REST OF WORLD: £16.49, £32 for 2).
For information about the recommended titles, and the authors' own books, read on below.
JAN | FEB | MAR | APR | MAY | JUN | JUL | AUG | SEP | OCT | NOV | DEC
January – Sarah Dunant on Jamaica Inn by Daphne du Maurier
From one of the nation’s best-loved storytellers comes a classic tale of murder, mystery and romance . . .
On a bitter November evening, young Mary Yellan journeys across the rainswept moors to Jamaica Inn in honour of her mother's dying request. When she arrives, the warning of the coachman begins to echo in her memory, for her aunt Patience cowers before hulking Uncle Joss Merlyn. Terrified of the inn's brooding power, Mary gradually finds herself ensnared in the dark schemes being enacted behind its crumbling walls – and tempted to love a man she dares not trust.
Jamaica Inn, Virago Press, £7.99
DAPHNE DU MAURIER, daughter of the famous actor-manager Sir Gerald du Maurier, was born in London and educated at home and in Paris. Most of her novels have been bestsellers and many of them have been made into film. She died in 1989.
Sacred Hearts by Sarah Dunant
1570 in the Italian city of Ferrara, and the convent of Santa Caterina is filled with noble women who are married to Christ because many cannot find husbands outside. Enter sixteen-year-old Serafina, ripped by her family from an illicit love affair, howling with rage and hormones and determined to escape. While on the other side of the great walls, counter-reformation forces in the Church are pushing for change, inside, Serafina’s spirit and defiance ignite a fire that threatens to engulf the whole convent.
Sacred Hearts is a novel about power, creativity and passion – both of the body and of the soul. Hidden history brought alive by a wonderful storyteller, renowned for her Italian Renaissance novels.
SARAH DUNANT is a cultural commentator, award-winning thriller writer and author of a trilogy of novels set in Renaissance Italy exploring women’s lives through art, sex and religion. Sacred Hearts by Sarah Dunant is available now, £7.99.
February – Chioma Okereke on Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston
Perhaps the most widely read and highly regarded novel in the entire canon of African American literature.
When Janie, at sixteen, is caught kissing shiftless Johnny Taylor, her grandmother swiftly marries her off to an old man with sixty acres. Janie endures two stifling marriages before meeting the man of her dreams, who offers not diamonds, but a packet of flowering seeds. . .
'For me, Their Eyes Were Watching God is one of the very greatest American novels of the 20th century. It is so lyrical it should be sentimental; it is so passionate it should be overwrought, but it is instead a rigorous, convincing and dazzling piece of prose, as emotionally satisfying as it is impressive. There is no novel I love more.' Zadie Smith.
An impressive debut love story set against an imagined African village from an exciting and original new voice.
Their Eyes Were Watching God, Virago Press, £8.99
In the Harlem Renaissance of the 1930s, ZORA NEALE HURSTON was the preeminent black woman writer in the United States. She died in 1960 in a Welfare home, was buried in an unmarked grave, and quickly faded from literary consciousness until 1975 when Alice Walker almost single-handedly revived interest in her work.
Bitter Leaf by Chioma Okereke
Bitter Leaf is a richly textured and intricate novel set in Mannobe, a world that is African in nature but never geographically placed. At the heart of the novel is the village itself and its colourful cast of inhabitants: Babylon, a gifted musician who falls under the spell of the beautiful Jericho who has recently returned from the city; Mabel and M’elle Codon, twin sisters whose lives have taken very different paths, Magdalena, daughter of Mabel, who nurses an unrequited love for Babylon and Allegory, the wise old man who adheres to tradition.
As lives and relationships change and Mannobe is challenged by encroaching development, the fragile web of dependency holding village life together is gradually revealed.
An evocatively imagined debut novel from a promising new writer about love and loss, parental and filial bonds, and everything in between that makes life bittersweet.
CHIOMA OKEREKE was born in Nigeria and came to England at the age of six. She started her writing career as a poet and performed throughout Europe and the United States before turning her hand to fiction. Her work has been shortlisted in the Undiscovered Authors Competition 2006, run by Bookforce UK, and in The Daily Telegraph’s ‘Write a Novel in a Year’ Competition in 2007. Bitter Leaf by Chioma Okereke is available now, £11.99.
March – Paula McLain on My Ántonia Willa Cather
In this powerful and astonishing novel, Willa Cather created one of the most winning yet thoroughly convincing heroines in American fiction.
'During that burning day when we were crossing Iowa, our talk kept returning to a central figure, a Bohemian girl whom we had both known long ago. More than any other person we remembered, this girl seemed to mean to us the country, the conditions, the whole adventure of our childhood . . . His mind was full of her that day. He made me see her again, feel her presence, revived all my old affection for her.'
My Ántonia is the unforgettable story of an immigrant woman's life on the Nebraska plains, seen through the eyes of her childhood friend, Jim Burden. The beautiful, free-spirited, wild-eyed girl captured Jim's imagination long ago and haunts him still, embodying for him the elemental spirit of the American frontier.
My Ántonia, Virago Press, £8.99
WILLA CATHER (1873-1947) was born in Virginia where for generations her ancestors farmed land. She became a teacher and journalist and is one of the greatest American writers of the twentieth century.
The Paris Wife by Paula McLain
A heart-wrenching story of ambition and betrayal that captures a remarkable period of time and a love affair between two unforgettable people: Ernest Hemingway and his first wife Hadley – a modern classic and a great love story.
Chicago, 1920: Hadley Richardson is a quiet twenty-eight-year-old who has all but given up on love and happiness, until she meets Ernest Hemingway. After a whirlwind courtship and wedding, the pair set sail for Paris, where they soon fall in with a circle of lively and volatile expatriates, including F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald and Ezra Pound.
Ernest and Hadley are thrust into a life of artistic ambition, hard liquor and spur-of-the-moment dashes to Pamplona, the Riviera and the Swiss Alps. But Jazz Age Paris does not lend itself to family life and fidelity. As Hadley struggles with jealousy and self-doubt, Ernest’s ferocious literary endeavours begin to bear fruit, and the couple faces the ultimate crisis of their marriage – a deception that will lead to the unravelling of everything they made for themselves in Paris, their ‘great good place’.
PAULA MCLAIN received an MFA in poetry from the University of Michigan and has been awarded fellowships from Yaddo, the MacDowell Colony, and the National Endowment for the Arts. She is the author of two collections of poetry, as well as a memoir, Like Family, and a novel, A Ticket to Ride. She lives in Cleveland with her family. The Paris Wife by Paula McLain is available in hardback March 2011.
April – Sarah Waters on The Vet's Daughter by Barbara Comyns
A haunting and original story of a 1930s childhood.
In this Freudian fantasy, Alice Rowlands lives with a father glowering 'like a disappointed thunderstorm', a fast-fading mother and a beastly menagerie in a dark house in 1930s Battersea. With her mother's death, life becomes almost intolerable for Alice, whose father treats her as a slave. Then kind 'Blinkers', the vet's assistant, arranges for her to live with his mother in the country.
There, Alice revels in the beauty of nature and falls head over heels for Nicholas, the lovely boy who takes her skating, motoring, and smiles at her. But Nicholas has other fish to fry, and Alice is forced to fall back on a talent for rising above her troubles . . .
Back in London, that talent comes to the attention of her father – who rapaciously propels Alice towards fame on Clapham Common . . .
BARBARA COMYNS was born in Warwickshire in 1909. She worked in advertising, dealt in old cars and antiques, bred poodles, and developed property. She and her second husband lived in Spain for eighteen years. Comyns died in 1992.
The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters
The brilliant and chilling novel from Sarah Waters – shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2009.
In a dusty post-war summer in rural Warwickshire, a doctor is called to a patient at lonely Hundreds Hall. Home to the Ayres family for over two centuries, the Georgian house, once grand and handsome, is now in decline, its masonry crumbling, its gardens choked with weeds, its owners – mother, son and daughter – struggling to keep pace. But are the Ayreses haunted by something more sinister than a dying way of life? Little does Dr Faraday know how closely, and how terrifyingly, their story is about to become entwined with his.
SARAH WATERS was born in Wales in 1966. She has been shortlisted for the Man Booker and Orange prizes and three of her four novels have been adapted for television. The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters is available now, £7.99.
May – Stella Duffy on The Daylight and the Dust: Selected Short Stories by Janet Frame
'I'm a short story addict, both reading and writing them, and I always keep hoping for the perfect story.' (Janet Frame to Tim Curnow, January 1984).
The Daylight and the Dust is the most comprehensive selection of Janet Frame's stories ever published, taken from the four different collections released during her lifetime and featuring many of her best stories. Written over four decades, they come from her classic prize-winning collection The Lagoon and Other Stories, first published in 1952, right up to the volume You Are Now Entering the Human Heart, published in the 1980s. This new selection also includes five works that have not been collected before.
Janet Frame's versatility dazzles. Her themes range from childhood to old age to death and beyond. Within the pages of one book the reader is transported from small town New Zealand to inner-city London, and from realism to fantasy.
This volume offers the most comprehensive collection of Janet Frame's unique and powerful writing.
The Daylight and the Dust: Selected Short Stories, Virago Press, £8.99
JANET FRAME (1924-2004) is New Zealand's most famous writer. She was a novelist, poet, essayist and short-story writer. Her autobiography inspired Jane Campion's acclaimed film, 'An Angel at My Table'. She was an honorary foreign member of the American Academy of Arts and Literature and won the Commonwealth Literature Prize. In 1983 she was awarded the CBE.
Theodora: Actress, Empress, Whore by Stella Duffy
A brilliant new novel from the author of Singling out the Couples, State of Happiness and Parallel Lies.
‘Justinian took a wife: and the manner she was born and bred, and wedded to this man, tore up the Roman Empire by the very roots.’ Procopius.
Charming, charismatic, heroic – Theodora of Constantinople rose from nothing to become the most powerful woman in the history of Byzantine Rome. In Stella Duffy’s breathtaking new novel, she comes to life again – a fascinating, controversial and seductive woman. Some called her a saint. Others were not so kind . . .
When her father is killed, the young Theodora is forced into near slavery to survive. But just as she learns to control her body as a dancer, and for the men who can afford her, so she is determined to shape a very different fate for herself.
From the vibrant streets and erotic stage shows of sixth century Constantinople to the holy desert retreats of Alexandria, Theodora is an extraordinary imaginative achievement from one of our finest writers.
STELLA DUFFY has written seven literary novels including The Room of Lost Things and State of Happiness which were both long-listed for the Orange Prize. She has also written the five novels of the Saz Martin crime series, eight plays, and over forty short stories, winning the 2002 CWA Short Story Dagger and 2008 Stonewall Writer of the Year. In addition to her writing work she is an actor and theatre director. Her latest novel Theodora: Actress, Empress, Whore is available now, £15.99.
June – Natasha Walter on Invitation to the Waltz by Rosamond Lehmann
A classic coming-of-age novel from one of the best-loved writers of the twentieth century.
A diary for her innermost thoughts, a china ornament, a ten-shilling note, and a roll of flame-coloured silk for her first evening dress: these are the gifts Olivia Curtis receives for her seventeenth birthday. 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.
Invitation to the Waltz, Virago Press, £9.99
ROSAMOND LEHMANN (1901-1990) was educated at Girton College, Cambridge and wrote the bestselling Dusty Answer in her twenties. She is one of the most distinguished novelists of the last century and was awarded a CBE in 1982.
Living Dolls by Natasha Walter
'A must-read,' Viv Groskop, Guardian.
‘I once believed that we only had to put in place the conditions for equality for the remnants of old-fashioned sexism in our culture to wither away. I am ready to admit that I was wrong.’
Empowerment, liberation, choice. Once the watchwords of feminism, these terms have now been co-opted by a society that sells women an airbrushed, highly sexualised and increasingly narrow vision of femininity. Drawing on a wealth of research and personal interviews, Living Dolls is a straight-talking, passionate and important book that makes us look afresh at women and girls, at sexism and femininity – today.
NATASHA WALTER is author of The New Feminism. She is a regular contributor to the national papers and BBC Radio. Living Dolls by Natasha Walter is available now, £12.99.
July – Joan Bakewell on Testament of Youth by Vera Brittain
A unique record of one woman's experience of twenty-five of the most cataclysmic years in modern history.
In 1914 Vera Brittain was eighteen and, as war was declared, she was preparing to study at Oxford. Four years later her life – and the life of her whole generation – had changed in a way that was unimaginable in the tranquil pre-war era.
Testament of Youth, one of the most famous autobiographies of the First World War, is Brittain's account of how she survived the period; how she lost the man she loved; how she nursed the wounded and how she emerged into an altered world. A passionate record of a lost generation, it made Vera Brittain one of the best-loved writers of her time.
A thrilling first novel – a big, wonderful, romantic wartime story – from the famous broadcaster and journalist. A debut at seventy-five years young.
Testament of Youth, Virago Press, £14.99
VERA BRITTAIN (1893-1970) Grew up in the north of England. At the end of the war she moved to Oxford where she met Winifred Holtby, author of South Riding.
All the Nice Girls by Joan Bakewell
All the Nice Girls captures the danger and excitement of wartime Britain with a sweeping story of heroic deeds and painful separations, illicit love and battles at sea, and above all, of the poignancy of longing and loss.
1942, and the war is not going well. As part of the war effort the Ashworth Grammar School for Girls signs up for the Merchant Navy’s Ship Adoption Scheme. The headmistress, who lost her lover in the First World War, believes the project will broaden the horizons of her girls, especially Polly and Jen, bright sixth formers eager to live and love despite it all.
Then Josh Percival, captain of the adopted ship, the SS Treverran, comes with his men to visit Ashworth. The choices that follow will disrupt all their lives, reverberating even to the next generation, when, decades later, life and love are on the line again . . .
A prominent figure in TV and the arts in Britain, JOAN BAKEWELL has been a broadcaster for more than 40 years, a print journalist for over 20 years, and has published her autobiography, The Centre of the Bed. All the Nice Girls is her first novel (£7.99). She was made a Dame in 2008. She's Leaving Home by Joan Bakewell is available in hardback November 2011.
August – Polly Samson on The Magic Toyshop by Angela Carter
In this, her second novel, (awarded the 1967 John Llewellyn Rhys Prize) Angela Carter's brilliant imagination and starting intensity of style explore and extend the nature and boundaries of love.
'This crazy world whirled around her, men and women dwarfed by toys and puppets, where even the birds are mechanical and the few human figures went masked… She was in the night once again, and the doll was herself.'
Melanie walks in the midnight garden, wearing her mother's wedding dress; naked she climbs the apple tree in the black of the moon. Omens of disaster, swiftly following, transport Melanie from rural comfort to London, to the Magic Toyshop.
To the red-haired, dancing Finn, the gentle Francie, dumb Aunt Margaret and Uncle Phillip. Francie plays curious night music, Finn kisses fifteen-year-old Melanie in the mysterious ruins of the pleasure gardens. Brooding over all is Uncle Philip: Uncle Philip, with blank eyes the colour of wet newspaper, making puppets the size of men, and clockwork roses. He loves his magic puppets, but hates the love of man for woman, boy for girl, brother for sister…
The Magic Toyshop, Virago Press, £10
ANGELA CARTER was born in 1940. One of Britain's most original and disturbing writers, she died in 1992.
Perfect Lives by Polly Samson
In an English seaside town, lovers and children, young men and middle-aged women, weave in and out of each other’s lives and stories.
A mother is tormented by her daughter’s tattoo; another only pretends to love her baby. A wife stalks her husband and his new lover; a broken egg through a letterbox tells a story that will not go away; the cat thinks he knows best. Threaded throughout are longings for love and poignant disappointments, surprising pleasures and temptations. Some will fall but some, like the small boy at the circus who sees his babysitter fly past on a trapeze wearing little more than a blue bra and spangles, will retain their feeling of awe.
Perfect Lives, follows Polly Samson’s rapturously received first collection, Lying in Bed. They are rueful, knowing, witty, poignant, bashful, bold. Her genius is in the nuance.
POLLY SAMSON was born in London. Her previous collection, Lying In Bed, was followed by a novel, Out Of The Picture. She also writes lyrics. Perfect Lives by Polly Samson is available in paperback now.
September – Susie Boyt on A Game of Hide and Seek by Elizabeth Taylor
A wonderful novel about first love and childhood summers by Elizabeth Taylor.
With a cover design by Celia Birtwell.
During summer games of hide-and-seek Harriet falls in love with Vesey and his elusive, teasing ways. When he goes to Oxford she cherishes his photograph and waits for the letter that never comes. Then Charles enters her life, and Harriet stifles her imaginings. With a husband and daughter, she excels at respectability: ornaments on the mantlepiece, remembered birthdays and jars of lilac. But when Vesey reappears, her marriage seems to melt away. Harriet is older, it is much too late, but she is still in love with him.
First published in 1958, this is Elizabeth Taylor's subtlest and finest work.
A Game of Hide and Seek, Virago Press, £8.99
ELIZABETH TAYLOR (1912-1975) was born in Reading, Berkshire and spent much of her life in Penn, Buckinghamshire. Critically she is one of the most acclaimed British novelists of this century. Virago publishes twelve of her sixteen works of fiction.
My Judy Garland Life by Susie Boyt
An irresistible mixture of memoir, biography, cultural analysis, experiment and hero-worship about one person's enduring obsession.
Fascinating and extraordinary, thrilling and poignant, My Judy Garland Life will speak to anyone who has ever nursed an obsession or held a candle to a star.
Judy Garland has been an important figure in Susie Boyt’s life since she was three years old, comforting, inspiring and at times disturbing her. In this unique book, Boyt travels deep into the underworld of hero worship, reviewing through the prism of Judy our understanding of rescue, addiction, love, grief and fame. What does it mean to adore someone you don’t know? What is the proper husbandry of a twenty-first century obsession?
Boyt's journey takes in a duetting breakfast with Mickey Rooney, a Munchkin luncheon, tea with the largest collector of Garlandia, an illicit late-night spree at the Minnesota Judy Garland Museum and a breathless, semi-sacred encounter with Miss Liza Minnelli . . .
SUSIE BOYT is the author of four acclaimed novels and writes a weekly column about fashion for the Financial Times. She also works part time as a bereavement counsellor. My Judy Garland Life by Susie Boyt is available now, £9.99.
October – Josephine Hart on The Company She Keeps by Mary McCarthy
Published in 1942, Mary McCarthy's first novel creates a fascinating portrait of a 1930s New York social circle.
The Company She Keeps follows a young bohemian intellectual, Margaret Sargent, through her experiences and lost loves in a time of coming war.
Experimental in style, each section of the book describes separate episodes in the main character's life from different viewpoints. The novel begins with the young woman en route to New York, and goes on to paint a satirical portrait of the intellectuals of the time, then depicts the failure of a marriage and ends from the couch as she explores her identity through psychoanalysis.
The Company She Keeps, Virago Press, £7.99. Available January 2011.
MARY MCCARTHY (1912-1989) was a well-known novelist, critic, journalist and memoirist. Her most famous novel is The Group.
The Truth About Love by Josephine Hart
The exciting new novel from the bestselling author of Damage.
It’s dangerous . . . and that’s the truth about love . . .
A young man shields his terrible wounds from his mother; a husband believes he can love his grief-stricken wife back to life; a young girl puts her own life on hold until her family can find their way back from blinding pain; a man surrenders to the helplessness of obsessive love.
Set in Ireland, this brilliant, intense story is about a family named O’Hara who chose to remain in the place of their loss, and the stranger from Germany who has run from his. It’s about love – for another, for a country, for family – and survival, and it’s remarkable.
JOSEPHINE HART was a Director of Haymarket Publishing and founded Gallery Poets before going on to produce a number of West End plays. She is the bestselling author of Damage, Sin, Oblivion and The Reconstructionist. She is married to Maurice Saatchi and has two sons. The Truth About Love by Josephine Hart is available now, £7.99.
November – Gillian Slovo on 117 Days by Ruth First
A powerful and gripping personal account of imprisonment and interrogation by one of the key figures of the anti-apartheid movement.
'In prison you see only the moves of the enemy. Prison is the hardest place to fight a battle.'
117 Days is Ruth First's personal account of her detention under the iniquitous '90-day' law of 1963. There was no warrant, no charge and no trial – only suspicion.
This sparsely written and unique record tells of her experiences of solitary confinement, constant interrogation and instantaneous re-arrest on release – lightened by humorous portraits of governors, matrons, wardresses and interrogators, seen as the tools of the police state.
RUTH FIRST was a journalist and academic and, along with her husband Joe Slovo, strongly active in the anti-apartheid movement. She escaped South Africa in 1964. In 1982 she was working at a university in Mozambique. On the 17th August she opened a letter bomb addressed to her by the South African security police.
Every Secret Thing by Gillian Slovo
The deeply moving memoir of the Slovo family which also encompasses much of the story of the Apartheid years.
A passionate witness to the colossal upheaval that has transformed her native South Africa, Gillian Slovo has written a memoir that is far more than a story of her own life. For she is the daughter of Joe Slovo and Ruth First, South Africa's pioneering anti-apartheid white activists, a daughter who always had to come second to political commitment. Whilst recalling the extraordinary events which surrounded her family's persecution and exile, and reconstructing the truth of her parents' relationship and her own turbulent childhood, Gillian Slovo has also created an astonishing portrait of a courageous, beautiful mother and a father of integrity and stoicism.
GILLIAN SLOVO (father Joe Slovo, mother Ruth First) was educated in Britain where she has spent all her adult life. Since Nelson Mandela’s release she has made frequent visits to South Africa. She has written twelve books. Her family memoir Every Secret Thing is available now, £9.99.
December – Anna May Mangan on My Brilliant Career by Miles Franklin
The story of a young girl's dreams, aspirations and melodramas told with zest and verve by the 16-year-old author.
First published in 1901, this Australian classic recounts the live of 16-year-old Sybylla Melvyn. Trapped on her parents' outback farm, she simultaneously loves the way of life of the bush and hates the physical burdens it imposes. For Sybylla longs for a more refined, aesthetic lifestyle – to read, to think, to sing – but most of all to do great things.
Suddenly her life is transformed. Whisked away to live on her grandmother's gracious property, she falls under the eye of the rich and handsome Harry Beecham. And soon she finds herself choosing between everything a conventional life offers and her own plans for a 'brilliant career'.
My Brilliant Career, Virago Press, £8.99
STELLA MARIA SARAH MILES FRANKLIN (1879-1954) was born into a pioneering family settled in New South Wales. Between 1918 and 1933 she lived in London, and in 1933 she returned to Australia where she spent the rest of her life.
Me and Mine by Anna May Mangan
A wonderfully compelling and entertaining memoir about the experiences of an Irish immigrant family in the tradition of Angela's Ashes.
Me and Mine tells the story of an Irish immigrant family who left rural Ireland in the 1950s to find work and a better way of life in England. From aunts who claimed their current hair shade as genetic and ferried leather suitcases dripping with blood from the Irish boat train because English meat was 'dirt' to one who mashed all of her only son's food until he was eleven in case he choked, and relatives being considered monied because of owning a post office account and a caravan!
Battling poverty, death, illness and everday life this is a story of survival, triumph and laughter in the face of adversity from a truly colourful cast of characters told with wit and warmth.
ANNA MAY MANGAN has contributed articles to newspapers and magazines including The Times, Independent and Mail on Sunday. She has been shortlisted for the London Fringe Short Fiction Award, the RTE Radio/Frank MacManus Short Story Competition and was placed second in the 2008 Sean O’Faolain Prize. Me and Mine by Anna May Mangan is available March 2011.
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