Olivia Manning

Introduction: 'Never a Day Without a Line'; 'Laburnum Grove'; 'The Most Terrifying City in the World'; 'Bucharest'; 'Escaping the Barbarians'; 'The Dark Side of the World'; 'Going Home'; 'Writing in Austerity'; 'The Booksey Boys and the Woman Writer'; 'Watching History'; 'A Strange Decade'; 'A Deteriorating World'; 'The Battle Won'; 'The Stray Survivor'

Deirdre David is Professor Emerita of English at Temple University. Throughout her long career she has taught courses in Victorian literature, the history of the British novel, and women's writing. She has published books dealing with social problems in the Victorian novel ( Fictions of Resolution in Three Victorian Novels 1981), the conflicted position of the woman intellectual in Victorian culture ( Intellectual Women and Victorian Patriarchy 1987), and the importance of British women in imperialism (ule Britannia: Women, Empire, and Victorian Writing 1995). She also edited The Cambridge Companion to the Victorian Novel (2001), and co-edited (with Eileen Gillooly) Contemporary Dickens (2009). She published her first biography in 2007 ( Fanny Kemble: A Performed Life ) and continues to teach as a member of the Society of Senior Scholars at Columbia University.

David is a generous and sympathetic biographer Artemis Cooper, The Guardian [a] clear-eyed, unsentimental and riveting biography. Lesley McDowell, Sunday Herald Deirdre David makes a strong and deeply admiring case for Manning as an artist who broke the mould of the women's novel by writing about war from a new perspective ... [a] timely reassessment of Manning's status. Claire Harman, Evening Standard confident, well researched and engaging. Sandeep Parmar, Times Higher Education thorough and sympathetic Lindsay Duguid, Times Literary Supplement David is an accomplished practitioner of the particular type of biographical recording she develops for her appreciation of Manning's life and works. Like her subject, she is good at the difficult arts of historical and narrative reconstruction. This book, drawing together Manning's many struggles, is a compelling account of a remarkable woman and her 20th-century stories. Rachel Bowlby, New Statesman a study that is subtle, deeply researched and utterly absorbing. Roy Foster, Irish Times Deirdre David's study of this frequently tormented novelist is a book that needed to be written. Paul Bailey, Literary Review [A] superb new biography. George Core, Sewanee Review