Sophia Willoughby, a young English woman from an aristocratic family and a person of strong opinions and even stronger will, has packed off her unsatisfactory and improvident husband to Paris. He can have his tawdry mistress. She will devote herself to the serious business of properly raising her tw[...]

Beginning with the remarkable essay "Contre Sainte-Beuve", this surprising and stimulating critical collection includes Proust on the contemporary writing of his era, on painting and painters, and on such literary masters of the nineteenth century as Tolstoy, Goethe, and Stendhal.[...]

Lolly Willowes is a twenty-eight-year-old spinster when her adored father dies, leaving her dependent upon her brothers and their wives. After twenty years of self-effacement as a maiden aunt, she decides to break free and moves to a small Bedfordshire village. Here, happy and unfettered, she enjoys[...]