Woman and her Sphere

It has been my pleasure to write forewords to a few of the novels reissued in August 2020 by Dean Street Press under their ‘Furrowed Middlebrow’ imprint. The theme this summer is ‘The Village’.

A major part of my commission is to uncover something of the lives of authors who, often very popular in their heyday, have subsequently disappeared beneath the waves of the rolling literary tide. One such is Celia Buckmaster – whose life has something of a novel quality. She would have made a good heroine.

Although the other two novelists I’ve ‘resurrected’ are both named ‘Dorothy’, their backgrounds were very different.  The novels of both were well-received by critics and well-loved by readers during the interwar period and well into the 1950s.

Needless to say, reading these novels, all quite delightful, and pondering on the lives of their authors, provided a welcome escape from our national predicament. One is never quite ‘locked-down’ when the imagination can roam freely.