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Reading lists

7 lesser-known Vintage Classics by women

Red Sky at Morning

She is not only a romantic but an anarchist, and she knows the ways of men and women very well indeed

Kennedy was immensely popular in her heyday

Margaret Kennedy's poised style, cool wit and skilful characterization kept her novels welcome for three decades

Margaret Kennedy caught just the taste of the time, mixing a stolid domestic Englishness with 'Continental' bohemians

‘Margaret Kennedy caught just the taste of the time, mixing a stolid domestic Englishness with 'Continental' bohemians’ Irish Times 
 
William and Emily Crowne seem to have it all – they live a life of privilege and glamour in London, the children of a successful poet, attractive, happy, largely blind to the world around them. But life takes an unexpected turn when their mother dies, and their father is caught up in the most scandalous and notorious of criminal trials. Suddenly effectively orphans, their aunt takes them in, and they grow up alongside their cousins, Trevor and Charlotte. But tensions and jealousies are rife between the four, and soon the Crowne children find that their father’s notoriety will follow them into their adult lives, with devastating consequences.

Return I Dare Not

‘She is not only a romantic but an anarchist, and she knows the ways of men and women very well indeed’ Anita Brookner 
 
 
Hugo Potts is a successful London playwright enjoying his moment of notoriety. Adored by critics and pursued by women, he’s the darling of the literary scene. But his public personae is exactly that – a personae – and he works exhaustedly day and night to portray the person the public expect him to be. One weekend he attends a party at a country house alongside the most important publishers and writers of the time. It’s an opportunity, of course, to meet interesting women. But over the course of the weekend he finds himself scorned by one, and unexpectedly profoundly understood by another, and his values and everything he’s held to be important abruptly come into question.

A Long Time Ago

An Edwardian family party on an Irish holiday is disrupted by a seductive prima donna

Elissa Koebel's memoir is as scandalous and self-absorbed as its writer, but for Hope, it is more than just the latest salacious read. The chapter 'A Summer in Ireland' tells of an episode that Hope remembers well, when the younger, beautiful and unconventional Koebel arrived to disrupt a family holiday. But back then, Hope could not guess that her own fascination with Elissa was echoed by her father. Letters from the time reveal yet another side of the story - but which version of the story is the truth?

A Night in Cold Harbour

A tale about a conscience awakened too late from the author of The Constant Nymph

Romilly Brandon was heir to  a fortune and the handsomest and liveliest young man in the county. But in his twenty-first year, the pretty daughter of the local parson, Jenny Newbolt broke his heart, and he left to live a dissipated life in London. Returning years later, Romily finds many surprises - his one-time sweetheart grown old and withered, and in possession of a great secret that shakes him to his core. When Romily finally learns the truth, is it too late to atone?

Troy Chimneys

A remarkable historical novel, set in Austen-era England, exploring issues of identity, love and class, from the author of The Constant Nymph

She combines imagination with delicate feeling, capturing the right atmosphere with a simple style that makes her story timeless

A Victorian gentleman is forced by illness to entertain himself with the family archive, and he uncovers the Regency-era correspondence and diaries of one Miles Lufton, MP - apparently a black sheep of the family, connected with a scandal long buried. But through the pieced-together artefacts from the past, a fuller picture emerges of a man torn between two personalities - Miles, serious, studious and penniless, and 'Pronto', flirt, political mover and eternal 'extra man'. Miles longs to dispose of his disreputable alter ego, but that way lies calamity...

The Wild Swan

When a scriptwriter makes unexpected discoveries when investigating the stormy past of a Victorian poetess

According to a sensational West End play, the Victorian children's writer, Dorothea Harding, was no dowdy maiden aunt, but the passionate participant in a torrid, tragic romance. It is the task of Roy Collins to turn the play into an equally popular film. Dorothea's descendents have only weak objections to the misuse of their relation's private past - they need money more than dignity. But Roy has misgivings, and when a set of revealing letters are discovered, he begins to feel that the truth might be more important than the story.

Together and Apart

A comfortable marriage is pulled apart by vague dissatisfaction, romantic fancies, gossip and petty argument - a masterfully told modern tragedy by the author of The Constant Nymph

Together and Apart is a quietly accomplished novel that catches the rustle of an era not so very far from our own

The intricate counterpoint between the life demanded by their peers and their own desires is exquisitely diagrammed

Betsy Canning is dissatisfied with life. She has always taken pains to be healthy, popular and well-treated, but despite her wealth, her comfortable homes and beautiful children, happiness eludes her. The problem must lie, she thinks, in her marriage to Alec, and a neat, civilised divorce seems the perfect solution. 
 
But talk of divorce sparks interference from family and friends, and soon public opinion tears into the fragile fabric of family life and private desire. Alec and Betsy's marriage will not be the only casualty, and in this newly complicated world, happiness is more elusive than ever.

The Forgotten Smile

The perfect holiday read: four visitors discover a new lease of life and reawaken old loves on a mysterious Greek island

An imaginative tale, symbolic and haunting and yet at times wryly humorous

Kate is bored of being overlooked by her grown-up children and decides to escape on an Aegean cruise. She ends up in Keritha – a mysterious Greek island all but forgotten by the modern world. There she encounters her childhood friends, the Challoners, returned to the island of their birth to claim their heritage. When another stray arrives: the unattractive, foolish Selwyn Potter, Kate is irritated. But under the spell of this strange and beautiful island both visitors find themselves, and each other, cast in a new light.

The Constant Nymph

A publishing sensation in the 1920s - 'It was the age of The Constant Nymph' (Jessica Mitford) - this acclaimed novel about a bohemian family and an unconventional romance is ripe for rediscovery.

It's a novel about ideas...as well as the sort of delicious and merciless emotions that can make people exuberant or desperate

Miss Kennedy . . . finds herself well to the front among novelists, men or women, of today. Its theme is the clash between two incompatible worlds, and its solution is reached through tragedy

Avant-garde composer Albert Sanger lives in a ramshackle chalet in the Swiss Alps, surrounded by his 'Circus' of assorted children, admirers and a slatternly mistress. The family and their home life may be chaotic, but visitors fall into an enchantment, and the claims of respectable life or upbringing fall away. 
 
When Sanger dies, his Circus must break up and each find a more conventional way of life. But fourteen-year-old Teresa is already deeply in love: for her, the outside world holds nothing but tragedy.

Ladies of Lyndon

Insightful, witty and caustic, Margaret Kennedy shows how the inhabitants of a perfect English country house, and their old ideas of family and respectabilty, must change and adapt to the new pressures of a modern world

This is an extraordinary debut – assured, wide-ranging and thoughtful

Miss Kennedy . . . finds herself well to the front among novelists, men or women, of today

Agatha is aware of an intensity, a powerful storm of emotion briefly awakened by a shortlived love affair with her cousin Gerald, that is entirely lacking from the successful marriage on which she is about to embark. Beautiful, young and carefully brought up, Agatha knows she is securing a perfect and luxurious future in marrying handsome John Clewer and becoming Mistress of Lyndon, and she soon becomes the perfect country house hostess. But when Gerald reappears and war in Europe disturbs the sheltered comfort of Lyndon forever, Agatha is once again haunted by the idea of a different life.

Margaret Kennedy

There is a wildness [in her mind]; a galloping, untutored spirit

‘People seem to get over things, don’t they? I don’t know how, but they do – ordinary people. I’m very ordinary, so I expect I shall do what they do.’ 
 
Lucy Carmichael is jilted at the altar. But no matter. Her loving and kind family never liked her explorer fiancé anyway. 
 
Instead of moping or falling into her supportive family’s arms, however, Lucy abandons their suburban home. Heading for the country, she takes up a teaching position in the industrial town of Ravonsbridge. 
 
There, she finds solace in her work, in her new (rather gossipy) colleagues – and rediscovers her sensible young self. But if Lucy has, despite everything, kept her head – where lies her heart?

Margaret Kennedy

Books by Margaret Kennedy

Articles featuring Margaret Kennedy

7 lesser-known Vintage Classics by women

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