'She shoots from the hip with a cigarette in one hand, and charms us with her silvery wit. More importantly, her gift to us is that she is herself such an astute reader.' Deborah Levy, Independent 'Strong and supple enough to loop together all her dancing ideas. Like Adriadne unrolling her ball of string, she guides us into the labyrinth, this time the one with the modernist epiphany at its heart.' Michele Roberts, Independent on Sunday 'She writes brilliantly...Lorna Sage seems to be coming to her own moment of truth in these essays, rejecting the critical dogma of the "death of the author" on which she had been nurtured and finding the courage to write in her own voice.' Elaine Showalter, The Times

Lorna Sage was professor of English at the University of East Anglia. Her previous books include Women in the House of Fiction, The Cambridge Guide to Women's Writing in English, a short monograph on Angela Carter, and Bad Blood, which was winner of the 2000 Whitbread Biography Award. She died in January 2001.