INTRODUCED BY HILARY MANTEL

Elizabeth Taylor is finally being recognised as an important British author: an author of great subtlety, great compassion and great depth - Sarah Waters

Writing stories that are extravagant and fanciful, fifteen-year old Angel retreats to a world of romance, escaping the drabness of provincial life. She knows she is different, that she is destined to become a feted authoress, owner of great riches and of Paradise House . . .

After reading The Lady Irania, publishers Brace and Gilchrist are certain the novel will be a success, in spite of - perhaps because of - its overblown style. But they are curious as to who could have written such a book - an elderly lady, romanticising behind lace curtains? A mustachioed rogue?

They were not expecting it to be the pale, serious teenage girl, sitting before them without a hint of irony in her soul.

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'Her stories remain with one, indelibly, as though they had been some turning-point in one's own experience' Elizabeth Bowen

'No writer has described the English middle classes with more gently devastating accuracy' Rebecca Abrams, Spectator