I wrote a substantial part of this book while I was one of the writers in residence at the Château de Lavigny in Switzerland, run by the Ledig-Rowohlt Foundation, and I would like to thank the Committee for their hospitality. I am grateful to all the other writers who were there with me for their good company.
This book would not have been possible without the women behind Miss Webster, who are Miss Joyce Caiger-Smith, Miss Rachel Cary Field, Miss Kathleen Cusack, Miss Persis Freer, Miss Barbara Wetherall, and Violet D’Oyen Fitchett, known as Miss Vi.
A Note on the Author
Patricia Duncker is the author of the novels Hallucinating Foucault (winner of the Dillons First Fiction Award and the McKitterick Prize), The Deadly Space Between, and James Miranda Barry, as well as collections of short stories and essays. Her work has been shortlisted for the Macmillan Silver Pen Award and the Commonwealth Writer's Prize. She is Professor of Contemporary Literature at the University of Manchester.
By the Same Author
Fiction
Hallucinating Foucault
Monsieur Shoushana’s Lemon Trees
James Miranda Barry
The Deadly Space Between
Seven Tales of Sex and Death
The Strange Case of the Composer and His Judge
Criticism
Sisters and Strangers
Writing on the Wall: Selected Essays
Edited
In and Out of Time
Cancer through the Eyes of Ten Women
(with Vicky Wilson)
The Woman who Loved Cucumbers
(with Janet Thomas)
Mirror, Mirror (with Janet Thomas)
First published in Great Britain in 2006
This electronic edition published in 2011 by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
Copyright © 2006 by Patricia Duncker
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printing, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the
publisher. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication
may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages
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is available from the British Library
‘The Way that it Shows’ by Richard Thompson. Published by Beeswing Music.
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ISBN 9781408822555
www.bloomsbury.com/patriciaduncker
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