Elizabeth Taylor was an English novelist and short-story writer. Kingsley Amis described her as "one of the best English novelists born in this century". Antonia Fraser called her "one of the most underrated writers of the 20th century", while Hilary Mantel said she was "deft, accomplished and somewhat underrated".
Anna Kavan was a British novelist, short story writer and painter. Originally publishing under her first married name, Helen Ferguson, she adopted the name Anna Kavan in 1939, not only as a pen name but as her legal identity.
Lady Cynthia Mary Evelyn Asquith was an English writer and socialite, known for her ghost stories and diaries. She also wrote novels, edited a number of anthologies, wrote for children and covered the British Royal family.
Winifred Holtby was an English novelist and journalist, now best known for her novel South Riding, which was posthumously published in 1936.
St Paul's Girls' School is a private day school for girls, aged 11 to 18, located in Brook Green, Hammersmith, in West London, England.
Edmée Elizabeth Monica Dashwood, née de la Pasture, commonly known as E. M. Delafield, was a prolific English author. She is best known for her largely autobiographical Diary of a Provincial Lady, which took the form of a journal of the life of an upper-middle class Englishwoman living mostly in a Devon village of the 1930s. In sequels, the Provincial Lady buys a flat in London, travels to America and attempts to find war-work during the Phoney War. Delafield's other works include an account of a visit to the Soviet Union, but this is not part of the Provincial Lady series, despite being reprinted with the title The Provincial Lady in Russia.
Dorothy Emily Stevenson was a best-selling Scottish writer. She published more than 40 "light romantic novels" over a span of more than 40 years.
Lady Anne Hastings, Countess of Huntingdon was an English noble. She was the daughter of Henry Stafford, 2nd Duke of Buckingham, and Catherine Woodville, sister of queen consort Elizabeth Woodville. She was first the wife of Sir Walter Herbert and then George Hastings, 1st Earl of Huntingdon, and served in the household of King Henry VIII's daughter, the future Queen Mary I.
Elizabeth Lydia Rosabelle, Lady Clifford, as known as Mrs Henry de la Pasture, was an English novelist, dramatist and children's writer. Her children's novel The Unlucky Family has been called a classic of its genre.
Francesca Beauman is a writer, historian, and television presenter living in both London, England, and Los Angeles, California.
Eleanor Lucy Hoult, known by her pen name Norah Hoult, was an Irish writer of novels and short stories. A prolific writer, Hoult wrote twenty-three novels and four short story collections. Her work deals primarily with themes of alcohol abuse, prostitution, class dynamics and ill-fated marriages. Between the 1940s and 50s, Hoult's work was frequently banned by the Irish Censorship Board.
Margaret Elizabeth Jenkins was an English novelist and biographer of Jane Austen, Henry Fielding, Lady Caroline Lamb, Joseph Lister and Elizabeth I. Elizabeth Bowen said Jenkins was "among the most distinguished living English novelists."
Ned Beauman is a British novelist, journalist and screenwriter. The author of five novels, he was selected as one of the Best of Young British Novelists by Granta magazine in 2013.
The Making of a Marchioness is a 1901 novel by Frances Hodgson Burnett, followed by a sequel, The Methods of Lady Walderhurst. Subsequent editions published the two books together, either under the original name The Making of a Marchioness or as Emily Fox-Seton. The collected version was republished by Persephone Books in 2007, and it was then adapted for radio and television.
Nicola BeaumanHon. FRSL is a British biographer and journalist, and the founder of Persephone Books, an independent book publisher based in Bath.
Blanvalet is a German publishing house, based in Munich, which was founded in 1935 in Berlin and is now part of the Bertelsmann's Random House publishing group. Blanvalet publishes entertainment literature and non-fiction, first in hardcover, and as paperbacks since 1998. The publisher became well known with the novel series "Angélique". More recent authors include Charlotte Link, Marc Elsberg, Karin Slaughter, Diana Gabaldon and George R. R. Martin.
Margaret Bonham (1913–1991) was a British short-story writer born in London. Bonham's works include the short story "The English Lesson" and the books The Casino (1948) and The House Across the River (1951).
The Hunger Strike Medal was a silver medal awarded between August 1909 and 1914 to suffragette prisoners by the leadership of the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU). During their imprisonment, they went on hunger strike while serving their sentences in the prisons of the United Kingdom for acts of militancy in their campaign for women's suffrage. Many women were force-fed and their individual medals were created to reflect this.
Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day is a novel by Winifred Watson, first published in 1938 by Methuen & Co with illustrations by Mary Thomson. A US edition was published in 1939 by D. Appleton-Century Company. In 2008 the novel was adapted into a film of the same name.
The Second Shelf is an independent bookshop in Soho, London with a focus on rare or rediscovered women's literature. It was founded in 2018 as a feminist bookshop. It also operates as an online bookshop. The name "The Second Shelf" comes from the title of Meg Wolitzer's 2012 essay in The New York Times Book Review about sexism towards women's fiction. It is a reference to The Second Sex, a book by Simone de Beauvoir.
