Since her suicide in 1963 at the age of 30, Sylvia Plath has become a strange icon. This book addresses why this is the case and what this tells us about the way culture picks out important writers. The author argues that without a concept of fantasy we can understand neither Plath's work nor what she has come to represent. She proposes that no writer demonstrates more forcefully than Plath the importance of inner psychic life for the wider sexual and political world. By the author of Sexuality in the Field of Vision.

The Haunting of Sylvia Plath

Literature & Fiction

Rose, Jacqueline

Essays & Correspondence

Virago UK

Tracey Thorn, musician and author of the bestselling autobiography Bedsit Disco Queen, offers a unique insider's take on the art of singing: why and how we sing, and the voice's power to captivate In her acclaimed autobiography Bedsit Disco Queen, Tracey Thorn recalled the highs and lows of a 30-year career in pop music. But with the touring, recording, and extraordinary anecdotes, there wasn't time for an in-depth look at what she actually did for all those years: sing. She sang with warmth and emotional honesty, sometimes while battling acute stage fright. Part memoir and part wide-ranging exploration of the art, mechanics, and spellbinding power of singing, Naked at the Albert Hall takes in Dusty Springfield, Dennis Potter, and George Eliot; Auto-tune, the microphone, and stage presence; The Streets and The X Factor. Including interviews with fellow artists such as Alison Moyet, Romy Madley-Croft, and Green Gartside of Scritti Politti, and portraits of singers in fiction as well as Tracey's real-life experiences, it offers a unique, witty, and sharply observed insider's perspective on the exhilarating joy and occasional heartache of singing.

Naked at the Albert Hall: The Inside Story of Singing

Thorn, Tracey

Humor & Entertainment

From one of Britain's most impressive cultural and political commentators comes a controversial and much needed look at our highly sexualised culture.

Living Dolls: The Return of Sexism

Politics & Social Sciences

Walter, Natasha

Social Sciences

Whole of a morning sky

'There is something holy about Georgetown at dusk. The Atlantic curling the shoreline . . .' It is 1960 and the Walcotts are moving into the city from the village of Highdam. School headmaster Archie Walcott knows that he will miss the openness of pastureland; his wife, Clara, the women and their nourishing 'womantalk and roots magic; and Gem, their daughter, her loved jamoon and mango trees. Their move into the rough and tumble Charlestown neighbourhood couldn't have come at a worse time, for the serenity of the city is exploded by political upheavals in the country's struggle for independence. Undercover moves - CIA-backed and supported by Britain attempt to bring down the Marxist government. Along with the sweep of events - strikes, riots, and racial dashes - daily life in the Charlestown yard and beyond gathers its Own intensity, Archie's friend, Conrad, seeing and knowing all, moves with ease among the opposing groups, monocle to his eye, white mice in his pockets; through one terrible night the neighbourhood tenses as the Ramsammy's rum shop is threatened with burning; and Archie, troubled by the times, tries to keep a tight rein on his family. Young Gem, ever-watchful, responds with wonderment and curiosity to the new life around her. In this, her first adult novel, Grace Nichols richly and imaginatively evokes a world that was part of her own Guyanese childhood.

Whole of a Morning Sky

Nichols, Grace

Biographies & Memoirs

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 17th 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 Modern Classics)

LEHMANN, Rosamond

Literary

In these captivating short stories, we find perfect miniatures of Rosamond Lehmann's fictional world. The themes that permeate her novels are echoed here—delicate portrayals of the world of adults as seen through the eyes of childhood, and fascination with other families—their otherness and the romance of their separate worlds. These beautifully crafted stories wonderfully demonstrate the genius of Rosamond Lehmann.

The Gipsy's Baby (Virago Modern Classics)

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 neighborhood. 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.

The Ballad and the Source (Virago Modern Classics)

A portrait of fashionable society at the height of an era, The Edwardians reveals, through the lives of its characters, all that was glamorous about the period—and all that was to lead to its downfall. Sebastian and Viola are children of the English aristocracy. Handsome and moody, 19-year-old Sebastian is heir to Chevron, a vast country estate. Tying him to his inheritance is a deep sense of tradition and love of the English countryside, but he loathes the cold, extravagant society of which he is a part. At 16, his sister Viola is more independent: an unfashionable beauty who scorns every part of her inheritance—most particularly that of womanhood. It is July 1905, and Chevron is once again the site of a lavish house party. The guests include the great beauty Lady Rochampton and the explorer Leonard Anquetil. It is Lady Rochampton who will initiate Sebastian in the art of love, but it is the Anquetil who opens for both brother and sister the gateway to another world.

The Edwardians (Virago Modern Classics)

SACKVILLE-WEST, Vita

British & Irish

It's a summer's day in 1946. The English village of Wealding is no longer troubled by distant sirens, yet the rustling coils of barbed wire are a reminder that something, some quality of life, has evaporated. Together again after years of separation, Laura and Stephen Marshall and their daughter Victoria are forced to manage without "those anonymous caps and aprons who lived out of sight and pulled the strings." Their rambling garden refuses to be tamed, the house seems perceptibly to crumble. But alone on a hillside, as evening falls, Laura comes to see what it would have meant if the war had been lost, and looks to the future with a new hope and optimism. First published in 1947, this subtle, finely wrought novel presents a memorable portrait of the aftermath of war, its effect upon a marriage, and the gradual but significant change in the nature of English middle-class life.

One Fine Day (Virago Modern Classics)

Panter-Downes, Mollie

Fashion model, UN ambassador, and courageous spirit, Waris Dirie is a remarkable woman. Born into a family of tribal desert nomads in Somalia, she told her story in the worldwide bestseller Desert Flower: enduring female circumcision at the age of 5; running away through the desert at 12 to escape an arranged marriage; being discovered by photographer Terence Donovan as she worked as a cleaner in London; and becoming a top fashion model. Although she fled Somalia, she never forgot the country or the family that shaped her. Desert Dawn is Waris Dirie’s profoundly moving account of her return to her homeland. As an international model, Waris Dirie was the face of Revlon. In 1997, as part of its campaign to eliminate female genital mutilation, the United Nations appointed her Special Ambassador for Women’s Rights in Africa. She now lives in New York with her son.

Desert Dawn

D'Haem, Jeanne

Dirie, Waris

Women's Studies

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