Several Strangers: Writing From Three Decades

Claire Tomalin is best known for a series of acclaimed biographies of Mary Wollstonecraft, Mrs Jordan, Katherine Mansfield, Dickens's mistress Nelly Ternan and, most recently, Jane Austen. But she has also worked as a publisher, critic and journalist, and the reviews and broadcasts collected here are from three decades as a literary journalist. Their subjects range from women's history to modern fiction, letters and biographies of the great. In three introductory essays to the main sections of the book, Claire Tomalin describes her own career, which began in London during the fifties and included a period as literary editor of the New Statesman and then of the Sunday Times, at a time when both of these papers were particularly vibrant and creative. The result is a vivid portrait of the literary scene over those decades and also a candid account of a woman's professional life - how it began in the male-dominated workplace of London publishing, and how family demands and circumstances propelled and shaped it.