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Angel

A Virago Modern Classic
  • Author
    • Elizabeth Taylor
Format
Regular price £9.99
Regular price Sale price £9.99
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.

*

'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

Not available for shipping to the following countries:

  • ASM
  • GUM
  • MNP
  • UMI
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  • MHL
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  • USA
  • VIR
  • Published: Sep 14 2017
  • Pages: 336
  • 196 x 129mm
  • ISBN: 9781844083077
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Press Reviews

  • Anne Tyler
    Jane Austen, Elizabeth Taylor, Barbara Pym, Elizabeth Bowen - soul-sisters all
  • Antonia Fraser
    One of the most underrated novelists of the twentieth century
  • Paul Bailey
    I envy those readers who are coming to her work for the first time. Theirs will be an unexpected pleasure
  • Elizabeth Bowen
    Her stories remain with one, indelibly, as though they had been some turning point in one's own experience
  • Hilary Mantel

    Daily Telegraph
    Elizabeth Taylor's tender, funny, exquisitely stylish novel keeps us on Angel's side, even though we are appalled by her narcissism and shocked into laughter by her self-delusion. She is a monster, but a delicious monster, and the novel poses, for writers, questions that don't date. That's why I'm so drawn to the book and have loved it for years; there's a bit of Angel in every writer, I fear.